Job Candidate: The Bipolar Narcoleptic with Fibromyalgia?

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." I end every article with this quote from Gandhi. It's a mantra of mine and I do my best to keep it at the forefront of my actions. But would you change your mantra and, by extension, your actions if you realized it was hurting your chances finding employment?

Over the last two years I've been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, narcolepsy, and bipolar II. I have used ChickOpinion for the last year as a platform to educate people about what these conditions are and how they affect the people who have them. It's my goal to help people who have these conditions cope better with them, and to help people without these conditions learn more about them. Only through education will people truly have compassion. 

I have never been shy about talking about these conditions. It has been my experience that the best way to educate people is to be honest and open about what I go through on a daily basis, so that, hopefully, they can learn from me. More than anything, I want to help people. This has been an uphill battle for me for almost two years now. If I can make that battle easier for someone else, I'll do whatever it takes.

These conditions come with massive stereotypes:

• Fibromyalgia - in pain, lazy, unaccountable
• Narcolepsy - lazy, unsafe, unreliable
• Bipolar II - crazy, unstable, depressed

You don't realize that you're being put into these stereotypes until you take a step back and look at the big picture. For me, my biggest moment of realization came last week when I was mulling over my job situation. Before my diagnoses, I was offered every job I applied for. In the last year, I've applied to over 80 positions, gotten 1 interview, and am still unemployed. I can't prove anything when it comes to discrimination or prejudice in hiring committees, but if you Google my name, you see "fibromyalgia" and "bipolar" first. 

I have done my best to embody my mantra and be the change that I wish to see in this world. I want to give hope to people who don't have a clue how to start living after their diagnoses. I want to make having a neurological condition socially acceptable. I want to be seen as who I am, not as the sum of my conditions. Instead, employers just see a liability.

I am going to continue to talk about all of these conditions, because not enough people speak up. 

I am never going to hide my conditions out of fear, because that only perpetuates the silent spiral of ignorance. 

I am going to be stronger than someone who has never faced conditions like these, because I will not give up.

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." --Gandhi