it’s not your fault that sort of crushing labor is poisonous to your soul. we’re all a product of our material conditions and yours are different to others.

i struggled a lot with work myself, feeling useless for most of my life because i couldn’t enjoy or even tolerate most types of labor that were available to me. there was no easy solution for me but it’s not an impossible situation to escape.

the support you’re going to get from your comrades on grad won’t be as helpful as support you can get from your co-workers or other people immediate in your life. when I worked a factory, we had union reps visiting throughout the week. even just talking to those guys made me feel sane, though the trade union situation in my local area meant they weren’t effective help, they were firm commies (that just couldn’t say so in as many words.)

Eat well, rest well, and have confidence that your body can get stronger.

My first thought is give yourself like, a week or two to adjust. It’s a huge change getting into plant/manufacturing work for most people and until you’ve experienced enough to understand ‘normal’ it can feel like you’re constantly being bombarded with new surprises. For me at least, the worst part of a job is often not knowing what’s coming or what’s expected of me, which usually gets better with time. There is always gonna be alienation and frustration unfortunately, but I find that if I’m able to take care of myself physically and create routines that let me see people I care about and get quality time in I can manage.

For the larger existential worry, the good news about a mass movement is that none of us needs to carry it on our back. We’re stronger together, and not everyone will be sweating it out in a bog like Che, nor should everyone be expected to. Maybe that’s not the most helpful thought but it helps me when I get down.

Sounds similar to some stuff I’ve been trying to make more conscious and confront, which is to do with the expectations I have of myself and how realistic or healthy they are. A big one for me is social expectations I impose on myself. I tend to have this nebulous image in my head of a smooth, effective socializer that I sort of implicitly believe is what “most people” are and then I get upset with myself when I can’t live up to that, or I avoid social situations so that I can’t fail to live up to it since I’m not trying.

But this image is unhealthy, it’s unrealistic, and quite honestly, it’s not even what most people are. If I actually look at my observations of how others socialize without the lens of assuming they have some special knowledge or skill that I don’t, they’re kinda all over the place and some of them even make me look more like the smooth image I have by pure contrast of how awkward they are. But ultimately, it’s not healthy to view it as a ranking of skill anyway. Because, and this is important, socializing is not a competition.

Whether most of your problems of comparison and expectations for yourself are socializing or something else, you can apply similar understanding. For example, capitalism tends to get us thinking our competency in the workplace is a ranked system of value. But in practice, it’s not even truly a meritocracy. They just preach like it is to get people clawing over each other for personal gain. In practice, it’s generally wealth and power passed on from rich families to rich families and anybody beyond that is like a lotto player trying to get ahead.

You are not weak. You are struggling, as many struggle. Where communists, where the masses find the most strength is in each other, not from a special potential unlocked from within. You can find ways to try to maximize your potential in different contexts, but that’s still relative to you and your limits and it’s not gonna be a thing that’s the same maximum every day, or even every hour. A person who is sick has a much lower maximum than the same person when they are healthy. Same with a person who is burned out vs. not. Having a disability like ADHD changes what your potential looks like vs. being neurotypical, as well as being medicated ADHD vs. not medicated.

I will reiterate: It’s not a competition and unlearning the idea that’s been shoved into our heads all our lives that it is, is important. They try to make it into a competition, but it’s mostly only an actual competition in the sense of who among the lotto ticket buyers will be the winner. In other words, the forced competition of capitalism is more rigged and random than it is a real ladder that rewards you for being “better.”

You are not your contributions. You are valuable and important beyond that. We have to take that mentality seriously; otherwise, we’d be implying that the most disabled and dependent people aren’t important, you know? You can take pride in what you do when you do it, but if you view your value as hinging on how competent of a revolutionary you are, you’re still spinning on individualist, capitalist thinking. Don’t let capitalism devalue human life. Sometimes it can help put it in perspective to look at how you view others vs. how you view yourself. For example, if you would oppose it devaluing the life of a Palestinian in Gaza, why would you be okay with it devaluing your own life?

You’re not weak for finding out what your limitations are, comrade. Everyone is different and have their own tolerances and limitations. Being vulnerable to yourself and acknowledging that is not weakness. And while yes, the Palestinians have it way rougher right now, having to do anything they can to survive an ongoing genocide, that does not mean your own difficulties and limitations are not important too, you probably live worlds apart from them and your life is also going on.

I think the best course of action would be to try to hold on a little longer there and at the same time try to contact a mental health professional. That way you could still try to be in your current job a little longer to see how things go while also seeking the help you need right now.

And like another comrade already told you, if the place is so toxic and you’re the only counter to that, your presence there matters a lot. You don’t need to be confrontational of them, as that can create animosity between you and the other workers, but being able to listen, assert your position and stand your ground when needed, could be the change they need to be able to pierce the veil of ideology they are clearly immersed in.

This isn’t down to you - A good percentage of modern day labour positions are absolutely soul-crushing, other employees tend to only survive it via years of practice deadening their own souls. I once got promoted and then quit my job one month later because dealing with management types absolutely ruined me, it took three weeks before I realised I was drinking every day just to survive. Thankfully I was in a vaguely financially able position to leave that job.

Whatever you decide to do, I hope you do what’s best to take care of yourself Please be assured that we are proud to have you as a comrade.

If you haven’t been fired you’re doing fine.

Spent a decade in a grocery store doing all sorts of work and just stubbornly refusing to quit (mostly because I’m a bit broken about certain things) and only left after I was point blank fired. Even after spending a significant chunk of my employment low key referring to some members of upper management as a pedo/sex pests as a warning to newer employees.

talk to coworkers

I’m saying this as someone who went (and is still going) through the same experience of not fitting anywhere, including my own head, incapable of hard labor, and for the longest time unable to land a spot to work with my brains. The only thing that really matters is that you do well by yourself. If you’re not okay, you’re definitely not freeing the colonies, not helping Palestinians or bringing about the revolution.

There is nothing fundamentally broken in you. People are very different, but the conditions of the world force everyone to be the same, and then shame you for not trying hard enough if you’re not. There absolutely is a place for you in the world and lives of others. I can’t give you a solution, but my advice is to be more open, with yourself and others, and to learn to ask for and accept help. Coworkers, family, friends, government, mutual support orgs, whomever. It might be extremely difficult. But you’re not alone in any of this, and people are built to work together. You’ve done a good job getting this far.

It is physically demanding, but also a chance for you to become physically stronger. I guess give it some time, share your struggles, become stronger?

If yo have to endure it for the survival, try to establish a routine, maybe. Eat well, sleep well, and share with your peers, for advice? Not as a complaint, but as an apprentice, for they know more about handling the work than you do.