autism sucks. maybe Asperger's

 How do I make a connection in my brain that work = money?

Question

tl;dr: my brain says take a fuckton of unpaid time off when work offers it instead of working even if I need money to pay rent (won't be booted out but my dad will be mad he has to pay my portion of rent). How do I get my brain to recognize work = money when I'm uncomfortable with work to begin with and my adhd brain looks for every escape possible from it? I work in the customer service industry right now and am trying to get out, been looking for 6 months and no dice.

So for a lot of my life I've done the bare minimum to just scrape by. Schoolwork? Minimum amount of work to get a D- in the class (passing grade in the USA when I was in school). Work? Minimum amount of work at work, do the least I can to get paid while still looking like I'm busting my ass. Literally anything else in life? Minimum amount of effort.

During the beginning of my "working years" beginning at 19 I would cover for people, do some overtime to cover people not coming in/quitting/etc. I did this for 2-3 years before realizing that I should have moved WAY up on the chain at that point and no one was even considering me for a higher position despite me expressing interest in it. Managers tried to get me to do the work without paying me the extra raise FOR the work and after doing that a couple times I said no, so they stopped.

I am 30 now. I feel like a little kid whining about having to work and it's the worst thing because I know I shouldn't feel like this as a fucking adult.

So at this point it's been quite a few years with this mindset of "minimum grind". I have worked in the "customer service" sector for 10 years and I am quite tired of it, to the point where in my current job I have actually snapped back at people because I'm so tired of people trying to shit on me and thinking it's okay. There are a lot of shifts where I clock out and just cry for a couple hours in front of my computer due to the stress. And this job is definitely even one of the lighter jobs I've ever had in my life, I have had far, far worse.

However, having Autism/Asperger's & ADHD I am sure a lot of you are familiar with the "I can't do x" mindset along with the procrastination that comes with being pressured into doing something, even if it's from your own brain. Having free access to Reddit doesn't help, much less video games, music, the internet in general, etc.

Currently I work from home and my job is extremely slow right now to the point where they are furloughing people/giving people the option to people take weeks off at a time. This is UNPAID time off. I recently took a few weeks off (even though I really could not afford to do that, and I knew it at the time) and I'm still looking at taking more time off after working next week because that means I don't have to deal with shitty customers. Also this entire time since January I've been looking for a job that "requires" me to be there because if I keep doing this I know I'm going to just be "chopping my legs off" so to speak and basically not having a leg to stand on (hehaue puns) if anyone actually finds out I'm cutting myself from work willingly lol.

Literally whenever our scheduling team puts time off for work up for the day on our scheduling board I'm one of the first people to take it for the rest of the day off no matter what. My stomach instantly settles down instead of feeling all "acid-reflux-ey" and I just relax and watch youtube/submit job applications/play video games. Otherwise I just wrestle with feeling very uncomfortable internally all day and my brain actively looks for any way out of that situation.

However not having to work with customers for weeks at a time means my mental health has been GREAT, lol. But my wallet is crying out in pain. Like right now I literally have $30 for 2 weeks and I only got paid $250 and most of that went to my dad for rent. I don't really have to spend money on much of anything but now I owe my dad back-rent, so... yeah.

Does anyone else struggle with anything like this? I can't apply for disability due to basically a life of masking and I also don't have money for therapy (lol obviously). I have no idea on how to get a handle on myself taking time off from work.

This entire thing also prevents me from going to school and working because my brain says "NO YOU WORK OR GO TO SCHOOL BECAUSE YOU NEED FREE TIME", I literally can't balance both. I have tried in the past and dropped out of college because of it. I'd love to go to school but I literally can't, I'd probably blow up on someone if I put that much stress on myself and I don't know what to do about it lol.

Sorry for the book, any advice is helpful advice. Thanks.

women lol

 https://www.reddit.com/r/AskMen/comments/u4b4sq/divorced_men_of_reddit_what_made_you_think/

I wasn't even married, just lived with a woman for 5 years just about.

Made me realize I have a LOT of my own shit to deal with and I absolutely can not and will not deal with someone else's insecurities and baggage.

Also the increased cost in food sucked. Whenever I wanted to get fast food, I also had to buy her fast food, etc. I have no problem with this but I was already living paycheck to paycheck and she had social anxiety and refused to get a job within walking distance (can't drive, can't afford a car anyway and I still couldn't at the time). At one point she just didn't leave the apartment for 2 years straight and played WoW (and cheated on me as soon as she moved in with dudes online while I was at work so joke's on fuckin' me) while I walked to work every day to bring in rent money. I was a shitty person too at the time but fuck if you're gonna be sitting around the house all day the least you can do is the dishes. This entire time isn't counting the 1 year I let her live with me after we broke up which I almost killed myself during.

That whole debacle really fucked me up mentally and now I hate people telling me what to do with my money because I got to spend basically 0$ of it for 5 years of my life, along with a lot of other mental problems I now have due to that relationship.

I'm not gonna argue she came out of that unscathed either but I literally did so much shit for that lady and got paid back via her cheating on me with dudes and carrying 0 weight basically for the majority of the relationship. There was a year and a half where I was jobless and she basically had to do mind numbing surveys on Amazon Mechanical Turk for money but I also had to work 8 hours a day with her on that so.

Never, ever getting married or dating ever again actually.

religion

https://www.reddit.com/r/aspergers/comments/u3jalf/does_anyone_else_struggle_believing_their_religion/ 

Nope.

With all the struggling I do in my daily life much less the struggle my friends and family go through every day, and the struggling many other people who have it much worse off than me have every day, there is no way there is a "higher power". My dad gives 10% of his paychecks to his church when he absolutely cannot afford it. My grandmother also does the same who can't afford it. The church and all religion is a waste of time and despicable.

Don't get me started on people who use religion as an excuse for how people "should and should not act", mfer do you have a brain? Do you have MORALS? ETHICAL TRAINS OF THOUGHT? It's like if these people didn't have a religion they wouldn't fucking know right from wrong or something. And the people who say "Oh praise gawd lawdy jebus" when something that I PUT IN THE WORK FOR happens to me, it pisses me the fuck off, BECAUSE I PUT IN THE WORK AND NO ONE ELSE! NO ONE BUT ME!

I had so many Sundays I could have spent playing video games, shoved down my throat, going to "Sunday school" i.e. babysitting services where I had to help the adults with small children and/or normal church. I fucking hate church.

I remember one night my grandma and dad sitting in the living room and asking me, when I was 12, why I don't like going to church and (due to having undiagnosed autism/adhd so I literally had 0 therapy to interpret my feelings about religion) I just said "because church is ass!" and got spanked the fuck out of.

Needless to say after that though I didn't have to go to church after that and spent all my free time playing Guild Wars with my friends outside of school, finally.

My dad tries to convert me to "believing in jesus christ" at least once a week now. I'm fucking 30. Stop. I have literally said as much and he just doesn't "understand why I don't believe". I believe Jesus was a person, but the bible and everything else around jesus/god is fucking fake as all fuck and too many people use religion as an excuse for good/bad things happening to them.

Religion has done nothing good for anybody during its existence. Many many people have died due to religion. It's not a force for good, it's a force that people use to nose into other people's fucking lives and not just leave people the fuck alone. The amount of people that "need something to believe in to live" is too damn high and those people also are typically skewed on morals and see taking advantage of people as "ok". I've lived with 0 religion, 0 believing in anything my entire life, and I am an "okay, well-adjusted to society" person. I work, I help people who need help if I can help them, I help my family when I can. This requires ZERO religion beliefs. It's just being human.

The church (ANY CHURCH) is a bunch of manipulative liars.

Until I literally see miracles performed in front of me that can't be explained by science, that shit can fuck off. And that will never happen and we will all be just worm food. Guarantee it.

Lawdy this post triggered the fuck out of me lol. My experience with religion is that religion SUCKS.

autism/adhd and shitty life

 from here:https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/u2bp64/what_is_the_worst_fucking_feeling/

I'm here with my grandma right now, at that stage of life. Soon my dad will be too. Thing is, I can barely take care of myself with autism/adhd. I treat my grandma like she's made of paper (she's 73, already fell and broke a hip once when I wasn't here a few years ago) and I try to help her as much as I can, but life experience/autism makes me an extremely self-centered person to the point where I sometimes help with dinner but not often, don't do a ton of chores around the house, etc, she mostly does them. I do help when I feel like it but I am very aware of my level of help and it's terrible. (I can't afford therapy to fix this)

My dad also has autism (I really wish he didn't have children, that's a whole other can of worms) and is the same way, plus she is his mom so to him she's basically "able to take care of herself" and doesn't help her a lot because he doesn't really seem to care about her from what I've experienced living here for 2 years.

My dad is in his late 50s I think now and he's also deaf, and job prospects aren't great for him but at least he knows how to drive, I do not, can not drive ever because I will kill someone if not myself using the car on the road even though everyone keeps pushing me to drive.

I can't spend time with them at the dinner table because I can't stand other people chewing, and I also don't spend a lot of time with them away from my computer because my computer has been my life for years, since I was living with my mom. It's my safe space basically and as time goes on it's really becoming a hinderance to everyone but I make zero effort to change because I literally can't lol.

Time with both of these people is going by so fast though, they're the only 2 members of my family who "seemingly" love me unconditionally and growing up for 25 years in a home with a single abusive mom and multiple guys coming in and out of my life as father figures has really fucked mine and my brothers' and my 1 sister's lives up. I really hate my mom took us away from living with our grandparents when I was 13 to go live with her and her abusive bf. So much time lost. We weren't allowed to communicate with anyone outside the house, etc. My grandfather died during this time and my mom didn't tell us even though she knew, we had to find out years and years later. So much left unsaid.

Soon enough I'll be 40 (hopefully not, hoping to pass before then), my dad will be 10 years older and probably not working, my nan will probably be gone, and I have zero idea where I will be in life, if not homeless. Probably still sat in front of this computer working shitty customer service wfh jobs and cutting my own hours for days off because I can't understand the correlation between work and money a-fucking-pparently.

Value your time with your parents and grandparents guys.

those people who came into high school classes who were graduates

 and your teacher would introduce them like "oh mah gahhhhd it's yoooou how are you!? class this is xxxxxxxxx and he/she works as a [cool job here that relates to the class]". I always wanted to be one of those people who comes in and is able to chat with the teacher as a "fellow adult" and stuff.

can't do that cause I'm mentally 13 and work dead end customer service jobs along with being fat lol. every single one of those people who came in were FIT as fuck dude

fuck my life. Today has just not been a good day for me mentally. I did get paid $50 for helping to fix a computer. Bought a $20 game and I was hoping some of the Hoarders would watch me play in discord/pick it up to play with me but no. Luckily the game has matchmaking so I was able to play games with some randos, it was fun? It was an okay time I guess, not really fun. Basically prop hunt via ghost hunting, it's really neat and actually very polished.

Man I just don't want to be alive anymore, it's been years since I've talked to anyone else IRL besides family members. Literally years I'm not even kidding.

If I would have known when I was younger life was gonna turn out like this I would have just... I dunno. still a wimp for pain so. The only way I'd go out rn is via gunshot but my dad locked his gun cases now so... nope. I'll have to buy my own gun if I wanna do it.

My 30th birthday is coming up and I always said I'd be dead before 30. I legitimately don't know how I'm still here, I eat like shit, I'm not active, I probably have like 12 health problems that I don't know about because I can't visit a doctor to check.

I literally just lost my benefits because I dropped to part time at work too so hahahahahahahahaha

god I hate my life just take me out please every day I wake up and the first thing I think of is "fuck I didn't die in my sleep" just please kill me