I don't know how I'm going to handle some big fancy corporate job

Which is what I'm going to have to do to make ends meet if I want to survive in this economy. In addition to being autistic, I also have severe chronic pain. It's from a spinal fusion surgery I had when I was 12. When I woke up from the operation they told me I was going to be in pain for the rest of my life and it's true.

Right now I'm in college and working in retail. They have me working 6-hour shifts six or seven days a week and even that's a lot for me to handle. By the time I get home I'm completely worn out. Sometimes I don't have the energy to do anything after I get home from work but lie in bed and stare at the ceiling.

This job supposed to be part-time but six people quit last week and ever since then they've had me on full-time hours. I can barely handle it but I don't have a choice. It's either suck it up or get fired and I don't know if anywhere else will hire me. After all I got fired for taking one sick day off at my old job. Just one!

I could get away with that every once in awhile in my home state but Texas is a lot more hardcore. You could work at a place for months and let them know several hours before your shift starts that you're not going to be able to come in so that they have time to find somebody else to cover your shift and they will still fire your ass. I would know, it's happened to me twice. I had perfect attendance with the exception of those times. I even came in early just about every morning and did more than they expected me to but if you're absent even once you're fired.

I don't understand how others manage to work 70 hour work weeks, let alone 40. My dad worked over 60 hours a week and I barely saw him. When he got home he just sort of locked himself in his study because he was too tired to do anything. I don't know how he managed to do that job or work those hours as long as he did. Considering the difficulty I'm having with this I know that doing that is beyond my capabilities.

They've got me at about 35 hours a week and I'm already burned out. I don't know how other people can work 10 hours shifts and be completely fine without a lunch break or sitting down or going to the bathroom even once. I don't know how they do it, but once I get out of college and get a real job I'm sure that's what's going to be expected of me and more and I don't know if I can do it and I don't know what I'm supposed to do because disability isn't enough to cover basic living costs.

I haven't opened up to many people about this because I don't want to give people another excuse to treat me like I'm some sort of child because of my stupid diagnosis. However, the few people I have opened up to have just told me that I have a negative attitude. They tell me that I must just be working the wrong job and if I worked a job I actually loved I wouldn't be bothered by the fact that I don't have time for anything else in my life. They said that if I actually loved my job I would come in no matter how sick I was. Not being able to go home until late at night wouldn't bother me at all. I wouldn't be tired when I woke up in the mornings but instead excited because I got to go to work again. I wouldn't be bothered by the fact that I don't have time to see my friends, my partner, exercise, or have any down time because I'd love working so much none of that stuff would even matter to me.

However, while I've never worked a job I loved, I've majored in a field I really loved. At least I did it first until no matter what I did it wasn't good enough for the professor and they started chewing me out for going to lunch in between classes instead of studying. When I told them that my blood sugar was low and I needed to eat, they just called me lazy.

Any job or field of study that requires me to disregard my own health and well-being is something I will eventually come to resent because I am a selfish lazy individual. No matter how much I enjoy something I can't power through the pain, the fatigue, or the hunger and shakiness that makes it hard for me to even hold a pen when my blood sugar drops out of nowhere and being asked to is only going to piss me off instead of inspire me to work harder. I am so, so, so, so SCREWED.