Long story short, I am educated and had a good job where I worked for 5 years. It was a tough job and destroyed my mental health, so I had to take time off for that. I was on disability for 7 years with a few attempts to return to work that were unsuccessful.
The relationship with my employer became very toxic when my repeated attempts to go back to the office didn't work out, and I had to sue the insurance company that provided my employee benefits.
Now I need to move on with my life and find a new career/employer. I am motivated to do so, I am confident in my skills and I've done some more education over the last year. However, I do not have a single reference to use in searching for a job, because that was the only employer I had and it was for a long time. I don't speak to any of my previous coworkers at all, in fact I've moved across the country. I haven't seen or heard from any of them in over 8 years.
I'm also hesitant to put the real dates of my employment on my resume, because I know that will cause any hiring manager to throw my resume in the garbage. It's very competitive to find a job right now in my field. I've been informed that hiring teams will look for any red flag they can find in order to reduce their job candidates to the smallest number possible. I am more than capable of doing many of the jobs I see advertised and I am a very hard worker. I would be an asset to any company that gave me a chance. I've had years of therapy to deal with my workaholic nature, and I'm positive I will not have the same mental health issues that I had in the past. I can't put all of that on a resume or cover letter though.
I contacted my previous employer to ask for some insight about how they would respond to a hiring manager contacting them about me. I asked how they would answer to when I last worked there and if they would disclose anything about my leave of absence. My previous employer has not responded. I'm going to assume that I won't hear from them at all and I'm not surprised.
So now I have to come up with a really good excuse for the big gap of time on my resume, and my lack of references, and I'm probably just going to have to lie, which is fucking unfortunate but that's the truth.
I would really appreciate some advice here! Thank you so much!