#being bogged down by various assignments from other classes made me put this project on the backburner

[dawntheduckrb]

Mouse with sloppy dramatic lighting

I just wanted to make a post so I can share this song lol, I always seem to work faster when I listen to it and its mega pretty

[jchall110]

I'm gonna tell y'all a story. It's a story about social stigmas, the American public education system, capitalism, mental health, income inequality, and parents who think they know best but actually cause more harm than good. It's the story of how I ended up where I am right now: in the break room of a major retail location wanting desperately to cry but unable to.

When I was very young, my parents knew I was different. I won't bog this down with the details, but essentially I was noticably different than my peers enough that my mom took me to get tested for various learning disabilities or mental disorders. Initially, the diagnosis I was given was ADHD, but that didn't satisfy my mother. She took me back a year later and I was diagnosed with Asperger's. Satisfied, my mother began talking with various specialists to see what kind of future I would have, and what we could start doing to help me become more well-adjusted to society. Once I had made it to grade school, after 2 years of kindergarten, I worked with an occupational therapist weekly, for 5 years. When I reached high school, I was declared well-adjusted enough by the school district that I no longer needed a 504 plan. I was officially no longer a special needs student. *Yay!*

I struggled my way through high school, having a lot of trouble with homework, especially long-term assignments like projects and essays. I didn't fail any classes (except my creative writing class, but that's a different story), but I nearly failed several important classes my junior year and only barely was able to graduate on time. But graduate I did, and I got accepted into the college in my town, which was really the only school I wanted to go to. So I started college. First semester freshman year was tough, as it often is for new freshmen. Of the 4 classes I was taking at the beginning of the semester, I dropped out of one and almost failed the other 3. I was told that it happens to everyone and that I would be fine after adjusting to college life.

Second semester of freshman year was worse. Of the 4 classes I started with, I dropped out of one and failed 2, and the third I only passed because my professor fudged the grades a little bit. First semester of sophomore year I failed all 4 classes I was taking. Near the end of that semester, when I knew that I wasn't going to pass anything, I began looking into some of the reasons why I was struggling and how I could possibly help myself. In looking, I mentioned to my mom some of the issues I'd been having. She told me about the initial diagnosis of ADHD, which I had no idea about up until this point, at 20 years old. I had been diagnosed with a learning disability for about 18 years and it had been untreated, and I didn't know about it until then. I began looking up stories of people with ADHD, and talking with my friends who have ADHD, and everything clicked into place. Unfortunately, it was too little, too late and I was placed on academic suspension, unable to return for the second semester of my sophomore year. Because I'm from a family that doesn't have a whole lot of money, but has just enough money that the government won't help me pay for college, I had to take out several private loans to pay for the 3 semesters of school I had. And because the grace period of these loans wasn't very long, I needed to find a job quickly to prevent missing payments and tanking both my own and my father's credit scores.

In February of this year, I began working at a major retail location. I will refrain from using its name because I want to. Those of you who care enough to know probably already know. Anyway, I work in the back room, about 3 shifts a week, for a total of about 24 hours per week, at $12/hour, paid bi-weekly. That's enough for me to cover my student loan payments, with some extra spending money, and still have a little left over. I'm thankful that I don't have to pay for rent, food, utilities, etc. because my dad knows that young people these days are, as he says, "financially fucked" and is allowing me to stay at his place, at least until I figure out my next step. Working retail, if you don't know, sucks hardcore. If you can avoid doing it, do so. If not, I'm so so sorry. A lot of people say that the worst part of retail is dealing with customers, but I personally think that the worst part of retail is corporate expectations. I believe this because retail would still suck if customers were better. If corporate expectations were more reasonable, it wouldn't suck nearly as much as it does now. I am one person, but they expect me to do the work of 5 people, which brings us to today.

It's back-to-school time, which is our second-busiest time of year. (I'll give you three guesses as to what's the busiest. I'll give you a hint: it's the really really obvious one.) Being in the back room, especially being the person in the back room when the store closes, means that I have to do little things everywhere in the store. Little bit of helping get product on the shelf, little bit of fulfilling online orders, little bit of helping people find stuff... Today, I've spent all of my shift so far, a bit over half, packing boxes that will be shipped to people's houses. I've had to do this because there were a very large amount of orders today and the people who work that part of the store during the day didn't have enough help getting it done. I will likely continue doing this until I have about a quarter of my shift left, at which point I will not have time to do anything else except get the back room set up for the truckload of product we're getting tomorrow morning. It is likely that I will get reprimanded, or at least will get a bad performance review, because of this. This is not the first time I've had to spend most of a shift doing things that should have been finished long before I even got here, but this is certainly the worst example up until now.

I've also had trouble sleeping the last few days, which may or may not be related to the fact that I feel miserable because I'm 21 years old and working part-time in retail while living with my dad after failing out of college. All in all, this day has sucked tremendously. It's understandable that I want to cry. And yet, because of the years of occupational therapy that I went to to learn how to "control" my emotions (among other things), I'm unable to. I cannot express my emotions in real life because "emotions are bad, mmkay?" according to the conditioning that I received as a child in school. Basically, I'm emotionally crippled and find it almost impossible to express myself truly in front of people unless my inhibitions are blocked, whether through comfort with a situation or being in an altered state of mind.

Were I able to express my emotions the way I'd like to express them in this moment, I believe that management here would finally understand that the amount of pressure that's been put on at least me is too much. That could go one of two ways. Either they realize that the pressure is on more than just me and that they need to get more people to help out back here, or they think that I'm unable to work this job and they give me less hours, or fire me outright. Chances are likely that it would end up being the second one, and I'm financially dependent on this job. If they do fire me, or make me quit, or whatever, it's unlikely I'll be able to find any other job anywhere except possibly at my dad's machine shop, and I a) wouldn't be making nearly as much money there as I make here and b) really really really don't want my dad to be my boss. Basically, I'm in an absolutely terrible position, and most of it can be boiled down to my mother refusing to accept that I have ADHD. So thanks Mom.

Anyway, I need to get back to work, and also find my manager so I can ask her what the fuck I should do.