Hi. Im not sure why I am doing this, but thought that writing down my thoughts might help me in some way.

Ive always had anxiety/depression my while life, but for some reason I am very good at hiding it. Normally its not so bad. I have some bad days and some good days, but recently it has been really bad. Leading me to a few suicidal thoughts. Something I thought I would never say.

I work at a big name tech company. One of those FAANG that everyone in my field is always hoping to get into. 8 years I lucked into a position there. The position was focused on graphic technology for a specific application. It wasn't a prestigious position. entry level mostly focused on bug screening and QA work. I still have no idea how I managed to even get this position as I had no good experience.

4 years later I was offered a position on a new team that was forming in our organization. It was a full fledged engineering position to work on tools and process for our application. During this time I felt elated and truly happy with the work I was doing. It was rough for awhile trying to figure out how to do various things and learn on the job, but I prevailed and felt like I really succeeded. I got high marks on all my performance reviews every year. 1 and a half years ago I was even promoted to the next level.

For some reason over the last year I became super depressed. The loneliness of working from home as well as the feeling that I was not good enough to continue to grow where I was became overwhelming. I was feeling passionless about the work even though I was becoming a leader for the team as a whole.

In my addled state I decided to reach out to other positions at the company. I felt like perhaps a new job would help me get back that passion. A few failed interviews later and I was feeling especially down that my skills and capabilities were not even close to good enough for anything. 

My last interview it appeared went well however. They immediately offered me a position, but said that the process needed to be closed out quickly to ensure the rec would remain open for the quarter.

I informed my current manager of the situation. To be clear at this point I had not informed them about any of this. I was just humming along quite nicely and for all they knew everything was great. Like I said im very good at hiding myself.

They worked on me to try and understand why I was leaving. I told them how I felt like I needed more mentorship and how I didn't feel like I was growing well enough. My director (3 levels up) even came to talk to me and ensure that I was making the right decision. They offered to have me talk to other teams in the org to instead join and help me. 

I spoke with some of the other managers in the org and it was all a positive feeling, but I was feeling extreme dread about missing my opportunity with this new position. I felt like I had to take it quickly or else it would fall out from beneath me. To be clear they never made any threats that that was the case, just my own head logic getting in the way. I also felt like there was no way I could be good enough for any of these other positions and that I should just take what I could get.

So I decided to quickly accept the new position. This all happened within the course of 2 weeks. It was a whirlwind of a time, and I barely remember most of anymore. This was all happening at the end of October 2021.

During my transition time my manager announced that he was retiring. I felt especially bad now that I was leaving the team with no manager. I spoke honestly with my 2nd line manager about my feelings and what I wanted to do with my career. At this point I was feeling very nervous about the whole situation, but felt like I had to finish what I started.

I started my new position and it all seemed to be going fairly well. It is however extremely difficult to feel any good connection to your coworkers when everyone is remote. My loneliness and anxiety spiked during this time as I tried to learn my new tech stack and assimilate myself.

After about 4 weeks I was having daily panic attacks, and was truly out of mind with nerves and feeling horrible. I didn't feel good about leaving my team and the opportunities I had in that org. 8 years of relationships and work that I dropped on the ground. 

I made the internal decision that I had made a mistake. I wanted to go and take back everything I had done. I contacted my previous org and told them about my situation. At the time they seemed very kind and understanding. They agreed to have me speak with the new manager on the team and see if it could work out. 

I spoke with him and it all seemed to be positive. They let me know they would accept me back and I was feeling really great that the situation was resolving. I had to of course next inform my new team of this situation. I was very nervous to do so of course. What a waste to spend time on me only to learn I wanted to go back. I felt horrible about that, but persevered.

My new teams manager was of course not happy to hear this news, but he agreed to talk with his management chain and work it out. At this point its important for me to say that there is an internal policy that you cant move positions more than once a year. So in order to do this my new team had to explicitly let me go.

At this point my old teams manager was pressuring me too get the ball rolling ASAP. For some reason they needed to get me back quickly. Im still not sure why that is but over the course of the next weeks in December there was a lot of pressure on me to push my new team to allow for the transition earlier rather than later.

My new team wanted to wait until they could hire a replacement. They have a big project they are working on this year, and losing me would have a large impact apparently. There was a lot of back and forth during this time. As I said I felt a lot of pressure to ensure that this situation could be resolved.

After the new year my old teams manager attitude seemed to shift. They were still on board with me coming back, but were adamant about the timeline they had originally set (which was the end of January). However there was also a lot of talk about this may not work out anymore. This of course caused me a large amount of anxiety.

My new team was going about the planning process for this year and stated they would work with the old org on a timeline. Last week they finally sat down to discuss. I heard nothing for most of the week and was feeling pretty ok about the situation. I felt like everyone still wanted what was best for me.

Last Thursday my manager set up a meeting to discuss with me how this has all resolved. It was not good news. My new team had proposed a move date of June. Apparently my old team decided this wasn't good enough, but not only that but that the position I held was no longer something I qualified for. They are now looking for someone with a different skillset and dont feel like I would be a good fit. 

This was a huge blow to me. I felt a crushing despair in my chest and completely locked up for the rest of the meeting. I couldn't breath and it was an incredibly awkward experience. The meeting ended with nothing being said.

The rest of the day I cried and tried to calm myself down as much as I could. I took the next day off to try and get my mind straight, but nothing seems to be working. This entire weekend has the been the worst of my life. Constant thoughts in my head and I cant get any relief. 

Feelings of not being good enough. Of worry that im going to be fired from my job now. Of worry that I wont be able to afford to live comfortably or find my passion again. Of worry about everything...

Today I tried to message my old org to talk with them about my feelings and just try to understand why they came to the decision they did. I got a generic response that all communication had to go through HR and my heart just completely broke. They wouldn't even talk to me about it anymore and that just made me feel even more worthless.

On top of all that now I feel uncomfortable with my new team. How can they ever trust me moving forward? I dont dislike them at all, but I was pushed so hard to get the ball rolling I feel like I alienated myself from them. 

Im sitting here now worried about my future. Worried about the things I said and the people I have interacted with. My mind wont stop racing and I cant sleep. I feel so awful about this situation and just want it all to stop.