I’m writing this in tears, I want to just end it all. I am 21 and have just been told today, 6 weeks into a cafe waitressing job that I’m unlikely to survive my probation period with them. Got quite upset and sought comfort from my partner when I got home who instead got frustrated and said he doesn’t see how we’ll manage our plans for the future (kids, saving a house deposit) if I can’t even hold down a basic minimum wage job, and he has a fair point.
I have always been like this, I feel like there is something wrong with me. I try to run away from my problems but I’ve realised the problem is with me. As a child, I had an autism assessment (which found me to be neurotypical) by my pre-school as I had selective mutism. I was perfectly fine, chatty and happy at home with my parents - I came from a stable family. But I’d go into pre-school and was 100% mute. I can’t remember why I was like this or what my thought process was, and that’s highly frustrating. This continued until the age of 7 where I began to whisper to other children, and by the end of Year 6 I was fully verbal and had a lovely group of friends. I was always very much into imaginative play up until the age of 10/11, which I feel I should have grown out of by then.
Starting high school was traumatic for me, I lasted a month. I couldn’t cope. I kept losing my timetable, planner, P.E kit. I couldn’t make sense of the layout of the building or homework. I would become incredibly overwhelmed at lunch time with kids bustling through the corridors. I had some sort of nervous breakdown that terrified my poor mum so much that she withdrew me from school to home educate me as she genuinely thought I was going to kill myself if forced to go, and she was probably right.
Home education was okay for me, my mum found a lovely tutor who did group sessions of 5 or 6 kids who also couldn’t cope with school and we had lessons at the local community centre. I did my GCSE’s with her and smashed them, I was able to be very academic in the right environment. I did an access course at college (this was the height of Covid so there was no social aspect, it was all online) and smashed it, and I have just finished my first year of a bachelor’s degree in an allied health profession. I have smashed all of my assignments, but I haven’t made a single friend or even had a proper conversation with any of my peers. I try but I stumble over my words and I find it genuinely exhausting.
I’m also losing my motivation for my degree. I remember I had a phase of really wanting to work in the NHS/Healthcare, and it became somewhat of an obsession. I watched so many dramas or documentaries about working in one specific profession and did so much research and I thought “this must be my niche!”. But then a few weeks into uni I just didn’t give a shit anymore and I’ve struggled to get back that initial feeling of euphoria. I passed placements in first year by the skin of my teeth, they said they felt I wasn’t engaging and didn’t show enough interest in the subject. I lied to my partner and said I’d had brilliant feedback from placements, because I’m so mortified by the reality. He was so proud of me and I don’t deserve it. I can’t see how I’ll pass next placement, so uni is probably fucked. I’ve had other fleeting obsessions before, in my teen years it was a character from a TV show. I also desperately want a baby, but I think that's a hormonal thing rather than an autism/ADHD thing and I am managing to keep it under control.
Now, onto jobs. My first job was waitressing but this was the height of Covid when it was dead, I was barely there and then quit a few months in because the commute home at night was a bit dodgy and I had a traumatic incident with a drunken customer. I then moved onto a bartender job. This was a small Italian restaurant where they only had one bartender on at a time and I thrived, I had my own little “station” to manage as I pleased without other staff members hovering. I am quite clumsy and dropped trays often but I was so good at the general management of the bar that the owners loved me, and this really built up my confidence.
My positive feedback in that job helped me decide I wanted try working abroad for a while, and I used an agency to land me a hotel front desk job in a country I was fascinated with, and accommodation was included. I got a 2 year visa. They sacked me after 3 months. My probation failure meeting discussed how I was “awkward and robotic” and “struggled to speak to guests”. This mentally destroyed me, I felt so attacked and not like a normal human being. My manager also said that I “confuse the hell out of everybody” and that I “appear to have a lot of hidden anger”. I was so confused, I don’t have a combative personality and I like to think I am kind and caring, so this was heartbreaking.
I flew home and didn’t leave my bed for a few months. I then got a job at a phone shop and that was actually fine for me, sitting at a computer suited me and I worked with 2 blokes who were very relaxed and not overly chatty. We had a laugh from time to time but I was mostly left to my own devices and it was lovely, I also was great at the actual work. I left as I was starting the get the interest in healthcare at this point and wanted some more relevant experience.
This is when I became a support worker for autistic, deaf and/or blind children, and I was wonderful at bonding with the children and understanding their needs, they really took to me. But I didn’t cope on one-to-one outings with the children. I would leave their lunchboxes on the bus, or forget their medication schedules and panic, mix up the details in their care plans etc. I knew that this was absolutely not on and I knew that my clumsiness was actively endangering the children, so I did the responsible thing of resigning. I knew I had to quit when my poor manager had to spend her evening trying to find a child’s backpack that I had left in McDonald’s, as it had essential medication in. I fucking hated myself.
Finally, my most recent job that I started 6 weeks ago is a waitressing role in a cafe. I have just moved in with my partner of a year and moved an hour away. I’ve coped with the move and new town okay, but I’m struggling with the job. I have a weird ability to smash interviews and really impress the interviewer, and then by the end of my first month they are wondering what the fuck happened. I think I can mask whatever is wrong with me for short periods but then it comes out eventually. I smashed the first 2 weeks of this waitressing job and was told I was excelling and that I had the potential to move up to supervisor in a few months, but now I’m really struggling to keep up with my tables and remember who needs to pay, who’s ordered what etc. I had a table with a peanut allergy come in the other week and I didn’t trust myself at all, I had to ask a manager to do it which isn’t a good look. I’m 21 and they have 16 year olds there who manage the job fine. All my managers talk to me like a child and I think they find me quite weird. I was sat waiting for my lift after finishing my shift the other day and one of my managers kept staring at me and she looked utterly baffled but never approached me. It’s like I bewilder people. They discussed in the probation meeting today that they don’t think I’m coping and that I may not be right for the team but they said they won’t decide fully until the end of my probation, but I’m quite clearly done for.
I have been in bits ever since, it’s a basic fucking waitressing job, 16 year olds can and do work this job and are fine. I think I’d work best in a job where I’m left to my own devices to get things done, rather than in a team where I really struggle with understanding the dynamics, politics etc - but I don’t know what jobs would have this structure. Ideally something where I'm left to work on a project independently then report to a manager weekly sounds bliss to me, but those jobs typically require degrees and experience.
I genuinely feel like I have some sort of brain damage sometimes. I’m starting to think I must have ADHD or autism but I’m scared to pursue the diagnosis.
As for seeking a diagnosis, my partner is from an Eastern European country when everybody is expected to just get on with it and not dwell on anything or seek a diagnosis, and I think if I told him I wanted to pursue a diagnosis he’d really struggle to get his head around it. I also think my mum would be in denial and would give me a hard time, my older brother has autism and she always says she’s glad she has a neurotypical daughter to help with his care in the future. I feel so alone, as I sit here tonight I feel like killing myself. I can’t cope with adult life at all. Please somebody reply I desperately need support I’m in floods of tears