Bipolar II - (Beyond The Unhappy Diagnosis And Into A Happy Life)

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But then I started working much. First it was one international school project, then another 2-year project and then a cross-border one for 3 years. I was teaching English in a school and doing project tasks after classes….Boy, it was exhausting! – 6 years on a roll! So in February 2015 I began with the same symptoms: fatigue, boredom, not getting enough sleep, feeling of exhaustion.

I knew right before the start of the last 3-year project that I had to say Stop! I had a hunch, an intuitive feeling not to accept the offer. But instead of listening to it and saying Enough! I need a break! There are other people speaking English in this school, I did not refuse the job. And I regretted my decision to this day. Depression No. 3 hit me like a hurricane. It was not mild this time it was severe. So I did what I knew would work. I went to the doctor. She prescribed me medication and I went on working – teaching and project work fighting every day for the strength to pass the day. And so from February until end of May I was teaching and working on the project. It was unbearably hard. I did not want my colleagues to notice. And my mother would not let me give up the project.

So for 4 months I was like a prisoner, going to work, doing the best I could and coming home tired, with no strength, even though I took 4 types of medicines. My body had accumulated so much stress and fatigue. So every day I crossed the day on the calendar and hoped to be able to finish the school year. Luckily somehow May came and with it most of my classes were over. And I had the strength to finish the project but I knew this had to end. So in August 2015 I quit my teaching job.

When I look back I guess it was not the job that caused the stress but the additional, the extra-curricular project stuff. I had spent 18 years teaching. I had no desire to become a deputy-headteacher. I was a senior teacher and head of the English department. Plus I won a scholarship for a Teacher training course in Cambridge, the U.K. so more or less I had achieved it all in this profession. It was really time for a change.

In 2007 a company in my town needed a translator and I started doing translation for them as a part-time job. Sometimes there were translations on-site with some foreign visitor to the company. And I liked doing translations. So for 4 years, until 2011 I was translating documents and reports, contracts and some manuals for machines. Of course I did not quit my teaching job. I did the translations in the afternoons, in the summer time, during holidays. The company was understanding – they would call and ask me how much time I would need for …xx… many pages and we had very good working relations. I was getting experienced and I really enjoyed it.