u/Affectionate-Bed8474

Edit: I tried posting this on r/antinatalism but it got removed. I guess this subreddit is my only option now.

| 24F have had an extremely traumatic life for as long as I can remember. I'm obviously not gonna sit here and tell you my whole life story because that's not really practical, however I had a very traumatic childhood and first began experiencing depression and suicidal thoughts when I was around 12 years old.
I'm not currently suicidal however and have never attempted suicide. I'm also on the autism spectrum which makes my life harder for me in countless ways.
I'm technically high functioning, however living with autism has made it extremely hard for me to talk to people, make friends and fit in socially. For most of my life l've been a social outcast and I haven't had any friends in about 12 years.

Furthermore living with depression and autism also greatly limits my job opportunities. I'm currently unemployed and have a B.S. in childhood education, however my last job was as an assistant teacher at a preschool making $18 an hour. I probably should have chosen a different major but I didn’t anticipate that my disability would make being a teacher so hard for me when I started college so now I’m just screwed. On top of all that, I live in one of the most expensive cities in the U.S. so my salary didn’t get me very far and I was basically living in poverty. I pretty much can’t do any job that requires good mental health or social skills and I often worry that despite having a bachelor’s degree, I may end up working low skill jobs and living in poverty for the rest of my life due to my disability.

My experience of life so far has been overwhelmingly negative, if I could go back in time and force my mom to get an abortion I would and I don’t think any of the rare moments of temporary joy I get once every few years have made any of this worth it. It’s ridiculous that most people think it was totally fine for my parents to force the burden of having to live in such a cruel fucked up world on me, entirely without my consent, but if I happen to decide that I’ve had enough of suffering here for the past 24 years and want to leave, I belong in a mental hospital? It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society and the world we live in is undeniably sick.

This is why I believe assisted suicide should be legal worldwide. As a society if we’re going to allow people to bring more innocent souls into such a cruel fucked up world without their consent, we should at least offer them a way out that doesn’t involve further suffering. For obvious reasons, I will never be having any children, no force on this Earth could ever compel me to put another person through this hell and I genuinely believe that people who choose to procreate are evil. Any person that would knowingly and willing bring an innocent child into a world filled with so much suffering and evil is a selfish piece of shit.

Edit: For more info on why a teaching career will not work for me and why I chose to pursue a B.S in childhood education please read this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/autism/s/y3QPgwVpOb

Hello everyone, I 24F am a recent college graduate with autism, I have a B.S. in childhood education, however during my final semester as a college student, while I was doing my student teaching, I made the unfortunate discovery that it would be very difficult for me to be successful in a career as a teacher due to my quiet, introverted personality, mental health issues, severe social anxiety and lack of social skills.

I deeply underestimated how hard being a teacher actually is before I began college and had no real clue what I was getting myself into. Being a teacher is honestly so much harder than it seems, especially when you have autism and depression like I do, it’s a highly performative role that often requires you to be friendly, put on an act and seem genuinely enthusiastic about what your doing to satisfy the expectations of parents and administrators.

Furthermore as a teacher you often have to speak to parents about the academic progress of their kids or talk to administrators and other staff members. If you can’t speak confidently and come off as nervous or socially awkward like I often do, people tend to assume you’re incompetent or don’t know what you’re doing.

Furthermore, since I also struggle with depression and often have days at work where I’ll literally spend all day long holding back the urge to burst into tears while thinking about whatever the latest thing making me miserable at the moment is, I honestly don’t think I have it in me to act the way I know I’ll be expected to in a teaching role. For all these reasons and many more, I’m not so sure being a teacher will work out for me.

People often ask me why I chose this as my major, they often assume its because I am passionate about education or like working with kids and while I wish these where the real reasons why I choose this career path, they sadly weren’t.

When I was in high-school I was dealing with extremely severe depression/suicidal thoughts. When my parents sat me down at 16 and told me that I needed to start thinking about what I wanted to do when I graduated, I honestly had no idea what I wanted to do, I wasn’t particularly passionate about anything and low key just wanted to die. At the time I didn’t even know I had autism as I wasn’t formally diagnosed until I was halfway through college at age 20 so I didn’t really have the knowledge to make an informed decision about what career path was best for me.

My two worst subjects in high-school were algebra and chemistry so I completely ruled out any career that would require me to regularly do complex math or chemistry. Furthermore, I did pretty well in high-school biology, however I took a college level biology course a few years ago and honestly barely passed it because we were literally learning complex cellular biology and that shit was too complicated for me so I doubt a career in anything biology related would have worked out for me either.

The only two things I’m naturally good at doing are writing and creating art, both of which are challenging to make enough money to live off of. I chose childhood education largely by process of elimination, and without really understanding how my brain works or what kind of work environment I’d actually be able to function in. I obviously wish I had explored my options more before settling on being a teacher but then again, I didn’t really fully understand what those options where, and my parents didn’t exactly offer to give me any guidance on this at the time.

Now I’m on the other side of it, degree in hand, unemployed, draining through my savings just to survive and no clear path forward, trying to figure out what kind of work I can actually do given my social limitations.

I’m currently job searching and it’s been really discouraging. I pretty much can’t do any job that requires confidence, good mental health or communication skills and I’m scared to even try because I’m sure I’ll eventually get fired. I never would have imagined that my life would turn out this way when I started college. The last job I had was as an assistant teacher in a pre school making $18 an hour.

If I don’t figure something else out soon, I’m worried I may end up living the rest of my life in poverty, working any low skill job I can manage to handle unless I wanna end up homeless. For context, I do not have an intellectual disability, my intelligence level is completely normal, I just have mental health issues, severe social anxiety and poor social skills like I mentioned earlier. I honestly need all the help I can get so if anyone reading this has any suggestions concerning what to do here or how to proceed I would greatly appreciate it because I genuinely have no idea what to do.

Edit: Please do not suggest moving back in with my parents, that isn’t a viable option for me, my parents are toxic and abusive and I haven’t spoken to them in over a year.