had a good confident 20’s. My 30s are a mess. Going on 5.5 years here, I might as well say that I’m going to have to start over.

If there is a right way to fail that is non-detrimental/non-consequential it was not my own. I hit every branch on the way down.

Since my parents never believed in mental health care, I was forced to learn how to cope with ADHD from a young age, remained untreated until 26.

My world improved with treatment. I relocated to San Francisco; now able to function in a normal office after doing retail support for 6 years. I had been hired at a small but promising startup.

After about 12 months, I was promoted to Lead.

At home, I found some unsavory things out about my 4 year relationship was born out manipulation, I moved out of the apartment, and things started to get better. I was doing well at work until storm clouds started rolling in. No human would be great at managing all new feature implementations for Backend API, Web App, iOS, Android, and Windows, being responsible for the mongodb to postgres migration, and my own work on the Windows Platform.

I was doing great, then just ok, and then August 2016, when all of management decided to go on vacation; but this still needed to ship on time. Well it went miserably, and I couldn’t even focus…. time to change up my ADHD medication.

Doctor gets cold feet… literally tells me that he can’t change my medication from what I had originally been prescribed from my doctor in the midwest… he was also unable to write it. Kaiser Permanente ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I had let it slip once that I had tried Cocaine once and he subsequently labeled me a drug addict, as I was told that as a gay software engineer they would not want to be liable for any harm and these groups were a nonstarter… so he sends me to psychiatry. Well what happens next? I can’t function, full stop, without ADHD medication.

I got fired in less than a month. Turns out the wait time for psychiatry was several months. At least therapy was available to talk about it with.

With the help of a mental health professional, I was able to pinpoint figure out the root cause of failure - High Functioning Autism, not caught early enough, as in childhood, is disastrous as an adult. I would need more verification on it but here I am, a hotbed of undiagnosed neurodiversity…

So I wonder, would knowing before I got fired allow me to have made accommodations? Would I have been able to keep my job? Probably, but unknown for sure how long.

Without a routine, stable enough people around me, general depression of the not knowing that critical information, and because I have zero time management skills… I missed out on exercising my stock options by a day, which would have been worth about $800k-$1M based on final valuation unknown because of dilution, when the largest graphics company in SF bought the company I was fired from.

Finally got around to my psychiatry appointment that they booked, because of my mention of cocaine, psychiatrist will not treat me. Kaiser won’t prescribe stimulants unless I went to the chemical dependency program…. Which, by the way, it’s not covered by my new insurance, which, at this point is Medi-cal/medicaid as my COBRA ran out.

At this point, I’m still not in treatment for ADHD, still need to get diagnosed with autism, formally, after specific tests get performed.

I used to have no problem remembering to take my HIV prevention medication. If I don’t to take it with my Adderall, I notice it….. but without it, combined with the depression of losing both my job, and my stock, dealing with terrible depression, I just spaced out on taking the drug.

It is hard to remember to take daily medication’s if I don’t realize their effects on their own. It h had been a whoknow it’s also hard when concentration and organization are dependent upon taking that drug. So, by slim chance I became infected with HIV.

I got stuck, and now I got myself more stuck. A bright spot was I started dating someone in 2018. He had just gotten a divorce about the time I got fired, so we both were q good influence on each others, confidence and self-esteem. Life was good until a visit to his estranged father made it worse.

They had a physical altercation which was unprovoked by his father, which caused some PTSD to return. In March 2020, he had taken his life. We had been together for over a year at this point, and now I was going in to pandemic alone.

So three years later, here I am, nothing has changed. I have no doubt that I probably should change everything, but it requires resources. My savings ran out. My bank stopped looking for my car, here in my garage the whole time, they can’t sue me as the statue of limitations has run out. But my landlord did - subtenant has decided that he is not paying rent for all the pandemic and he won’t leave, so I am working through that. I am pretty much in financial ruin, San Francisco is paying for a housing subsidy, while I am looking into SSDI. I am not certain that I would be successful in starting over. Working is almost impossible to consider when I start to experience the feeling that by doing so, I am engaging in the outright betrayal of future generations of living things on the planet.

Clearly I have a hate relationship with money to begin with, maybe I am fine with not buying into capitalism anymore; and in turn working for the very people who are not willing to sacrifice their own interests.

The c-suites are keen to continue to push their greenwashing agenda, ignoring their responsibilities to commit to full sustainability and environmental recovery. It truly is a race to the bottom for late stage unrestricted free market capitalism, a continuous slow moving accident - a travesty reeking of desperation, billionaires who can afford to protect their wealth all while reaching hard for the maintaining the last few vestiges of supplying the world unsustainable and unnecessary consumer goods and services, as the planet slowly burns. This may be the best time to get off the train.

I don’t blame myself for all of this, but I am responsible for what I do next. Life was good before California, maybe by leaving it, could it be good again?