I'm 19, a pharmacy assistant, a cafe allrounder and a uni student studying biochemistry specialising in biomedical science and cellular biology. I'm really scared that I'm going to lose my cafe job though, I let it slip that I'm autistic and mum keeps saying they will fire me for it, I'm on holiday and last week they cut off all contact and haven't given me a roster for when I get back. The pharmacy is awesome but they won't give me more than 5 hours a week because I got hospitalised last year and they adjusted the roster to help, but now that I need work they're not giving me back my old roster.

Everyone is telling me that I need to move out to get away from my mum because she's abusive, I want to get away from here but my dad is amazing and gets really upset when I talk about leaving and I can't deal with that.

I won't be able to move out anyway if I lose my job because I'm autistic, I can't get any government benefits for autism because I'm too high functioning, and I can't get low income youth allowance because I'm still 'technically' dependant on my parents until I'm 22 (Australian law) unless I support myself WITHOUT benefits for a whole year on my own first.

I have had social workers offer to help me write letters to centerlink (Australian government benefits people) to get me exempted but there's a risk that if I do that they will start investigating my mother, who don't get me wrong SUCKS, but if they take my brother and sister away from her then she'll go properly insane and I love her too much to let that happen.

I'm so done with everything. It makes me feel so sick that I might end up being a victim of discrimination, I was already chronically mentally ill before they even diagnosed me with autism, I have massive emotional disregulation problems, like I will be fine one minute then thinking about self harm the next, but even after winding up in emergency twice they refused to hospitalise me for it and I had to advocate for myself to get into a support home for a few months to get some form of full time care.

I met my closest friend at that care home, she was horrifically abused by her mum, met my mum once and was actually semi scared of her. She desperately wants me to move out but SHIT!!!!! It's fucking hard!!!!

So how do I figure out how to keep a job with autism, get away from my mum without killing her or my dad or involving my siblings in this, find a way to manage chronic mental and physical illness and my bachelor's degree on top of all of that and do the whole thing with no financial help at all?

Thanks for reading my rant. Also sorry, this was a shitty thing to share but I really gotta vent somewhere.

*update* they fired me because it 'wasn't working out' and they had quote 'better people' on staff.