EXP glitch

Me and my friends defeated the ender dragon, and shortly after I died. I then soon realized I wasn't able to gang EXP. My friends told me the enchant mending was taking it and mending my gear. But nothing was getting mended. I tried leaving the world, dying, and simply just trying to gang EXP. but no matter what I did nothing worked. When you kill a mob and the EXP orbs drop, I was able to pick them up but they didn't do anything. Just wanted to mentioned that Incase it helped.