u/SindaFNRella4

Is getting a CDL a good idea? I don’t have any familial ties and I really need a career change. The only issue I see is I have a dog. I had some major live upheavals in the last two years and have moved back across country in with my father and I’m way past flat broke. That is not a great thing for my mental health in a few ways and I’m trying to get out. Traveling across country isn’t a big deal to me. In my 20’s I did traveling hotel renovations so I’m used to being on the road and in some hairy places. I know there are trucking schools that pay for your training if you dedicate an allotted amount of time with them so that’s the route I would I have to take. But again, I have a dog. He’s a big boy Boxer mix rescue I adopted a few years ago so I really really don’t want to separate from him. Are there carriers that would do paid training with a commitment for a new driver with a dog? Anyway, any help or tips and incite would be appreciated.

42f divorced at 35, 3 missed miscarriages and haven’t worked since Oct 2025. I moved back to Ca after 23 years from Tx middle of march this year, back into my lifelong barely functioning alcoholic fathers 1 bd apartment in a tiny town far away from opportunity and 1.5 hrs from where I grew up. I overestimated my ability to cope and this move was a “Hail Mary” to try and shake loose something. I’d lived alone for many years in Tx after lots of abusive relationships with substance abusers, two of which were narcissistically abusive and one of which I have a restraining order in Tx for that almost killed me over Covid. Two years ago I was doing the best I had ever been. No relationship, living in a 3bd house alone, had made it through my soul pups cancer and passing, at a career I loved and making the best money I had ever made on my own. I had a savings for once. Then a guy I had previously worked with came to work at that same place. He singled me out and was harassing me (body checking me in the halls, messing with my supplies, throwing laundry at my head during closing shift). I repeatedly went to mngmt over a series of months and kept retraumatizing myself as they did nothing to stop it or change my schedule so there’d be no interaction. I begged them over and over to look at the cameras for proof. Still they did nothing. I started having major panic attacks again and eventually ended up in the ER. I separated from that job right before the election last year and have had 21 jobs since August 2025. May 2025 my cousin I had just started to speak to (my family of origin is super estranged) killed himself and I flew back to California to say goodbye. That rekindled the notion that I maybe needed to come back to California and not wait for the “perfect time” being that more and more was going wrong in TX. My nervous system is so shot I’m unable to work. It’s like my body has been getting louder and louder over the last 2 years to the point I’m not even functioning as a person anymore. Complete systems failure. Waitressing/bartending is out, Construction is out and now being a licensed massage therapist is out. I have been actively seeking residential treatment for behavioral health, primarily to get me out of the apartment with my father as since being here my nervous system has tanked further than the bottom I was already at. I also have re blocked my mother again after a short time of having her unblocked for my mental health.

I truly feel so alone, more alone than I have ever felt and more afraid than I’ve ever felt. I’m in debt 25,000 with no income, a completely destroyed nervous system and no path in sight on how to wade myself through the weight of the world. I’ve always just pushed through, found a way, got tunnel vision and survived my whole life just to have it come crashing down again. Somewhere in me knows I have worth, knows how tough I was and everything I survived, knows I’m intelligent just undereducated, as much as I hate the word resilient, I am (or was atleast). I know no one is coming to save me, no one ever had before, but I’m so terrified that I won’t be able to save myself this time. I don’t feel safe 24 hours out of the day. I know I’m not crazy or lazy but my brain won’t shut off so I can breathe and think clearly running under chronic stress and burnout and injury for so long. I don’t know who I’m supposed to be or who i CAN even be anymore. I’m so terrified of becoming a crazy person yelling at fire hydrants on the street and getting assaulted out there but I don’t fit into the recovery boxes people keep trying to put me in. I did AA for 15 years (that’s where my ex/abuser/rapist essentially stalked me at and the rooms protected AA instead of its member -me). Like I said; I don’t feel safe anywhere anymore. I’m so frustrated with the world and my place in it. I’m a shadow of who I once was. She was sweet, loving, hopeful, had amazing work ethic, clean, responsible with her money, funny… god I miss joking and laughing.

All I ever wanted was a mid range job/career, and a family and/or a few close friends and to feel safe at night when I lay down for sleep. What if this is really it? This is all I was meant for? A cautionary tale and a scapegoat for all the abusive people that I allowed in my life to say “see… she was the problem!” It’s so sickening I just kept going instead of seeking the legal justice I deserved in both my personal life and professional one. Am I really a stray cat that never finds its forever home? Am I meant to decay into madness and poverty with no one to remember me kindly or care? I deserved so much better 1,000 different times and I’m so angry, frustrated, hurt that I didn’t fall apart back then when I was younger and had so much more life in front of me. How could I have sacrificed my own growth and success to build others up to be so alone in my own life now? How do I keep living? What step am I supposed to take with CPTSD, ptsd, adhd, GAD, panic attacks to be a functioning member of society and carve out a little place for myself to sleep soundly at night and build a small group of friends/chosen family so I can be a part of something that makes life worth living?