I (21f) had my daughter when I was 19. For the past two years we had been living with her father, off of his income alone. He basically worked so much and was gone so frequently that I ended up leaving him and taking my daughter to live with my parents again. (Long story short postpartum depression on top of never seeing the father of my child or him coming home so stressed out from work and us fighting nearly every time we did see each other, led to us needing to put distance between the relationship)
My daughter and I have been living with my parents for around 2 months now and I was able to buy my own vehicle about a month ago (100% thanks to my family’s help)
Now, my parents are really starting to put the pressure on me to find a job or some source of income as I won’t be able to pay for my own car insurance, gas, or phone bill in the near future. (Not even mentioning the outrageous price tag in a box of diapers these days)
The real shitty part is that prior to having my child I only worked fast food jobs. Obviously these are typical jobs for a teenager and I didn’t mind the work back then. Yes it sucked and yes I did have to put up with constant harassment and had zero work-life balance but it was bearable at the time.
I set up a resume and profile on indeed and have been relentlessly applying for every job available. The few that aren’t food service related have either ignored my calls completely or told me that im just not a good fit for the role. I have interviewed at quite a few fast food places and they have all been extremely eager to hire me, but all of these jobs seem so fcking miserable at this point.
I have a child and she is the light of my life. My values and sense of self are so drastically different from what i used to be. I do not want to waste 30 hours of my week making minimum wage (or less than in some cases) when I could be at home with my girl, focusing on her love for learning and eagerness to explore.
I KNOW that’s there are technically other options and opportunities worth exploring and trust me I am considering every possibility right now. I just desperately wish that things could be different. I wish that I could have enjoyed the time with my daughter a little bit longer. I wish that these shitty low wage companies could actually gaf about their employees so that these jobs don’t have to be on my shit list in the first place. I wish that SAFE and TRUSTWORTHY childcare was affordable and actually attainable for the average broke family. It feels so utterly hopeless raising a child in this fcked up system.