CW: SA, suicidal thoughts

I’m in the middle of a very wayward path toward transferring colleges and will appreciate any advice or encouragement I get. Sorry in advance for the length. Feel free to scroll to the bottom.

I turn 25 next month. I grew up with incredibly socially debilitating autism, which left me subjected to - among other things - being sexual assaulted by classmates in broad daylight (California doesn’t classify anything less than penetration as sexual assault but I don’t care). To this day, the only dreams I remember are routinely occurring nightmares centering around my obliviousness and ineptitude (including the stereotypical “re-enrolled in high school” scenario). Needless to say, school wasn’t a strong suit of mine. With little options, I attended what was functionally a reject school in Menlo Park, CA, where the diminished rigorousness finally allowed me to excel and experience the intellectual elevation I longed for. Sadly, I got far too accustomed to riding this emotional high, a thrill that proved useless upon enrolling in Santa Clara University in 2016. Being thrown back into intellectual uncertainty revived every nasty memory of panic I thought I had overcome, instead of organically stimulating me like I’d hoped. I developed an eating addiction and dropped out in 2018 with no regrets (also picked my major on a whim and realized I hated it).

I started seeing therapists and practitioners for the next few years weekly (group sessions, 1-on-1, psychologists and psychiatrists) and was unemployed for over two years. After settling into a delivery job, I enrolled full time at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, but the campus’ physical proximity to my old elementary/middle school left me feeling physically violated every time I stepped on campus. It was at this point I finally realized what happened to me was sexual assault, so I ended up wasting way too much money on therapy. I withdrew from an entire quarter so I wouldn’t commit suicide.

Last month, my brother had a gargantuan meltdown and started shooting me in the head with an automatic airsoft gun. That catalyst finally sprung me out of passivity and made me realize I need to get the hell out of this pit.

I’ve spent every waking hour reaching to job listings, apartments, and even prospective roommates nearby Cupertino (I’m staring from scratch again at De Anza College asap so I don’t run the risk of credits not transferring). For the first time, I’m optimistic about my self-reliance, but my accomplishments so far have been a mess. I intend to work full-time so I can finally handle ALL of my expenses, but I can already see how poorly this’ll look to a UC admissions team. All they care about are students’ abilities to earn enough money to donate large alumni endowments / enhance their reputations and I am manifestly not that type of person.

(Parenthetically, I’m not staying in school for the educational benefits. Getting my degree’s just a more straightforward way of leveraging myself in the job market to make the money I need to stop leeching off my exhausted parents.)

Tldr: I’m about to attend my third college because my PTSD demolished my sense of worth. How do I keep my chin up?

Also the school I attended hired a publicly verifiable human trafficker and is owned by a church named after and founded by a serial rapist, so ruining their reputation by spreading that documented evidence might cheer me up a bit.