Top student my whole life… now unemployed, ignored and honestly lost

I'm in my 20s with an engineering degree (studied abroad). Growing up I was always the “smart kid.” Bare minimum effort, still top 10. People studied for weeks, I’d study the night before, sleep before 10 zvangu and still hit 80s.

Uni was the same. I could cover an entire syllabus in a day and pull 80s/90s or even 100s on easy modules. Sometimes it backfired tho 😅 and I’d get 50s/60s kana zvawomera munhu wese but I never failed.

Now none of that matters. Abroad, I couldn’t get hired because I wasn’t a citizen. Meanwhile people averaging 50s and 60s got jobs before graduation. I had an 80+ average, did extracurriculars, even spoke at an international engineering conference… still nothing. Some guys in Austria and Australia are the ones who actually did reply mentioning kut despite my profile being really strong, they were disappointed the national laws restricted them from hiring me bcz am a foreign graduate.

Now I’m back in Zimbabwe. 500+ job applications. No exaggeration. No rejections, no interviews… just silence. The silence is quieter than the vacuum of space lol. At this point I’m more likely to solve the Fermi paradox and hear back from an alien than an employer😅.

I’ve applied for everything, even basic admin/data capture. I tailor every CV. I even made one for a friend who’d been unemployed 2 years and they got a job immediately (they don’t even talk to me anymore tho lol).

I’m not planning to hurt myself or anything. But some nights I go to sleep wishing I just don’t wake up. Just tired. Apa I once called hotline revanoda kuzvipfuudza just to hear hangu what they were gon say but they never picked haaha. Just got me thinking kut if uchitoda kuzvipfuudza in zim you will just go tokufutsira zvedu tichidya sadza ne beef.

Anyways I'm now considering plan C which I absolutely hate but have a structured way on how to execute it. Just thought I should tell my story to someone out there.