Man oh man, this sounds like my life exactly (before my last job, which really put me over the edge). After the last especially traumatic six months of that job I basically stopped sleeping, couldn't remember anything, couldn't concentrate, and even had a couple of blackouts. Now have been diagnosed with PTSD.

But my therapist thinks the PTSD had me in its grip long before that job. I never identified my childhood as abusive (because it was 19 years of constant emotional and verbal abuse, and was always told by my parents that it was my own fault). I had nothing to compare it to so it just felt "normal". But here's the thing: I grew up not making any friends (I only ended up with friends because some wonderful people latched on to me in high school and stuck around), and not really doing much to maintain any relationships, just saying that I was "naturally" a very solitary person. I can stay by myself for endless periods of time, and actually seem to prefer alone-time. Also, there's stuff I love doing----drawing, writing, calligraphy, painting, piano, guitar----but do I ever do it? No! There never seems to be any time, although there is endless time for TV and avoiding the things I love. I think that I clutter up my life so that somehow I can avoid living it.

And I, too, have worked at many jobs. The only ones I stayed at for a few years were the ones that had built in variety, like theatre---always a different show coming in. Jobs that were routine I couldn't stand. Like you I felt like I was spinning my wheels and my life was just kind of drifting by aimlessly, STUCK.
In the mid nineties I was a counsellor and read a book that I saw a lot of myself in, called Trauma and Recovery by Judith Lewis Herman. It is written for people doing counselling but not in a technical way, so it is pretty easy to understand and I really recommend it. The parts that particularly resonated for me was the second chapter where she writes about the symptoms of hyperarousal, intrusive symptoms, and especially (for me) something called constriction, which means reducing your life down in different ways. I am currently re-reading this book and highlighted the last sentence of one of these segments because I saw myself in it so clearly (I don't know if I am allowed to quote it on this forum but here goes): "Because reliving a traumatic experience provokes such intense emotional distress, traumatized people go to great lengths to avoid it. The effort to ward off intrusive symptoms, though self-protective in intent, further aggravates the post-traumatic syndrome, for the attempt to avoid reliving trauma too often results in a narrowing of consciousness, a withdrawal from engagement with others, and an impoverished life."

That's me all right. No major relationships, my friends all live in other cities or towns (I keep moving away about every ten years), and lots of stuff that I love to do but never do. Aaaack!!! I had been to counsellors too, who didn't really pinpoint anything because I come across as fairly articulate and together. Although they did jump on my solitary-ness and kind of blamed me for it and why didn't I have more relationships in my life (I told them I was just a solitary kind of person----and yet I am also fairly outgoing and comfortable with people. I just don't want to be around them!). Also they tended to suggest that I maybe had depression, but I never felt that I did, just that something was missing from my life and I was stuck.

So personally I think we are both in the right place, and the more I read on this forum the more I recognize in myself. Especially in your story. Thanks for writing and I hope you keep it up----I am new here too and thought I was the only person like this in the world so I am VERY glad to meet another.
Rivergirl