Hi Reddit, I posted an abridged version of this on HN. Hoping this reaches somebody.
I honestly don't know how to start this ... I'd like to say I've fallen on hard times but I've honestly been here for the past gods know how many years and I don't see it getting any better. I got into mobile development six years ago after dropping out of college to deal with family BS and now I feel like it was the worst mistake I ever made.
I remember getting my first iOS job during all the family turmoil, one parent refusing to help out with college tuition and the other acutely unable to. I felt like such a hero. I'd dropped out and taken the year to teach myself iOS development, went through the ups and downs of the software job grinder, and I'd finally come out in a much better place than I could have dreamed, with a nice paying job, ability to take care of my family, and a gf I thought was with me through thick and thin. I was playing my "role as a man". I was making friends after what seemed like a lifetime of social inability -- turns out I was just getting severely emotionally and physically abused at home; takes a while to realize that when you're in it -- and I even had my own apartment. Everything was golden. Most of my salary was going to taking care of others, but I had more than enough to take care of myself. Fuck! I could pay for my apartment and my mom's and siblings. It was my duty, I thought. And I was doing it. Even when I realized the unreal amount of pressure, I looked at the salary and thought I'd beat the odds and was living up to my expectations. I don't want to go into details and the multiple descents into disillusionment; the betrayals and hindsight-foolishness might just reduce me to tears and I've just seen myself cry for the first time in twenty-one years.
Fast-forward through four years of utter loneliness, no friends, the realization that my "friends" were never really friends, my relationship being little more than self-mockery, no family, my mother lying to cops, faking a DV incident just to get me to sign over my part of the mortgage I helped her get, cops looking at me knowing it's BS, the subtle ways they tried to tell me they know it was BS yet could do nothing about it, my gf boning anyone who would neg her then smile at her, three emergency surgeries to save me from literally almost losing my life, my "father" having passed on not just abuse but a life-threatening illness my mother only recently saw fit to tell me was a thing, the less-than-rejections from faceless corporations as I tried to get the ball rolling again on my career after a "sabbatical", the rejections from faceless corporations as I tried to get even the most menial job so I can at least afford a storage locker to sleep in, the subtle siphoning of my pride followed by full-on debasements ... right now it feels like I've been falling so far below the origin on the x-axis it just feels like I naturally tread water in the negative. I've been homeless for the past two years with season after season now melding together to form one long slog and I can't even differentiate one day from the next. I can't differentiate any feelings. I feel them only under the heaviest quilt of nihilism and I gotta say, at least the thread-count on that is luxurious.
I started the summer like I've started every other summer, telling myself it's a new season and this'll be the year everything finally works out. I let go of my hopes of maintaining my career progression only to find out I can't even start from scratch as a Junior since it seems the HR/AI just finds my resume sus with that large of a gap and I just refuse to be reduced to panhandling.
So here goes my last effort. I've been a long-time lurker and you guys have dropped so many gems on me during my career that made me feel like I was really learning something of these dark arts. I'm still capable of iOS development, even if not the highly capable mobile developer I was saw myself on the way to becoming. If anyone needs some work done for iOS/macOS that you just don't have the time or will to get to, I'd really appreciate if you could pass it on and at least give me an opportunity to get my foot back in the door of professional work because I just got rejected from the cashier job I applied to at the airport I've been sleeping in for the past year and to say I'm at my wit's end would be doing a disservice to the stamina of my descent. I've avoided posting any personally identifying details on here because, honestly, whatever shred of dignity I have left has gone into this post but you can message me on here and I'll share them with you if you need them.
If not, thanks for the memories anyway.
-- Hard Bottom
