Demographics: White Female, Undergraduate in Engineering, Autistic

Tags: Engineering, Undergraduate, Autism, Food Insecurity, Job Hunting, Financials, Basic Needs

My name is Tricia. I'm going into the computer science major next semester and I live in a city nearby. I am from a family of two parents who have been married for over 20 years and my brother who attends another university right now. I'd say my childhood and my adulthood have both been characterized by instability, not in terms of my family dynamics at all, but I say instability because I've experienced a lot of mental health issues, and that, I think, factors into the financial issues I've been having.

I have autism. I was diagnosed at 18 months of age and my parents basically did everything in their power to try to circumvent that which they thought to be a problem, or at least a potential problem. They set me up with OTs and PTs and everything imaginable to try to get me a better start. But I always get the feeling that anything they would have done wouldn't have been enough because I still definitely feel the effects of my autism in my day-to-day life. It's not something that's gone away with time. If anything I've felt more isolated over time because I've begun to realize how much it affects me and how difficult I find it to relate to other people in a lot of cases. Maybe that isolation has factored into how lonely I feel. Maybe the loneliness has factored into my excessive spending habits.

My family is in good financial standing as far as I know. We live in a middle-class neighborhood. I spend a lot of money on video games, on technology, on food, on all of this stuff and I spend more than what I have and I've gotten myself into debt multiple times because of it. If there's something that I'm interested in buying, it's an insurmountable urge at times to spend money and it feels like I want my bank account to be at zero. I don't want there to be any money there. This is coming from the perspective of someone who throughout my childhood I have been financially secure, but as soon as I get my hands on my own money I just spend it on stuff that I don't need. That's why I thought it would be a good idea to participate in this study because in some ways I am food insecure. It's not to the degree of most food-insecure people, but first of all,  I don't have any money for basic things like coffee.

I've been looking for a job over the summer and I still haven't been able to find anything. I've been applying to places near my house because I'm moving back home for the summer and no one's been responding, not even the Dunkin Donuts whose owner I know. It almost feels as if I couldn't handle a job even if I were to get one because I'm too emotionally unstable for it. I think I have a job secured for the fall semester at least because I'm in an advising program for students with Autism. The program advisors decided that I would be suitable for a job for the fall which is good, but that's still four months away. I don't think my parents are going to be giving me any more allowance over the summer because they'll conclude that I don't need it.

Throughout the semester, I've been basically broke. I've done things here and there to try to get more money. I have tried to access financial aid resources on campus.  I tried asking for money from the emergency fund and I never got a response for that. I did eventually get an email, something along the lines of the financial aid having run out. So I'm assuming that's what happened with that. But I'm not sure. I begged my parents repeatedly for money and I think they're just kind of fed up with me. They stopped giving me money when I asked for it. Yesterday I had an altercation with my dad where I asked for $2 to wash my clothes and he made a huge deal out of it saying, "Oh, well, you shouldn't have spent the allowance I had given you on a drink and some candy." I still don't entirely agree with that because I had made a mistake earlier that day when I was depositing Opportunity Bucks into my account and I had accidentally double deposited because the website bugged out. So I had budgeted for washing my clothes. It felt like he was insinuating that I was lying about something, which I wasn't. I mean, we made up already but it's just, it demonstrates that they seem to be tired of giving me anything. On one hand, it feels like I should be able to spend my money on what I want to spend it on, but on the other hand, they're just trying to be good parents because I have demonstrated that I cannot handle money.

I went off the antipsychotic I was taking a while back because I thought that was the cause of the spending urges. I read online that this particular antipsychotic could cause impulsive behavior. So I went off of it and going off of it contributed to my nervous breakdown. I'm off of it right now because Walgreens has been extremely slow in getting it to me, but I still have urges to spend money even though I'm off of it. So it's not the antipsychotic, evidently. It's just me. It's something else and I don't know what it is. I don't know if I'm making excuses for myself or for my spending habits, if I'm just pointing fingers at the antipsychotic instead of saying that it's a personality flaw, or whatever. I don't know.

This is becoming a problem for my studies because I'm constantly thinking about my food situation, even when I'm doing other things. Like I'm thinking, how do I allocate my swipes? How do I balance this with that? How do I plan out my day to get the best use out of it? Like, I've been making an effort to be abnormally efficient about it because my meal plan doesn't allow for me to be inefficient. My parents gave me this meal plan in the first place because they had the expectation that I would prepare food for myself just for breakfast. But because of the aforementioned coffee thing, it ended up being many days on which I ate dinner at home as well. That's not really what I want to do because I also can't cook for myself all that well. There's not much left in the pantry at my apartment. So oftentimes I'll ask my roommate, Ella, for food or something because she'll have food or covertly take some food. That was a big issue in my previous room assignment. I switched room assignments because my previous roommate wasn't a fan of me. Ella is a lot more flexible with this stuff which I appreciate, but it just feels like I'm not being clear enough with her. I'm not asking every single time I take food and I should be. I have eaten too much in the past, and now I'm kind of adjusting to not eating as much. I don't know. Maybe I'm talking out of my ass here. It just feels like I'm trying to accustom myself to eating less in general, maybe to lose weight, maybe because I just can't afford more food. I don't know. Maybe it's a combination of the two.

I don’t use the University Pantry that much. I was going to go there this weekend actually for detergent, not for food because I didn't have any money to buy laundry detergent, but I just got an email yesterday from them saying that they don't have detergent. My dad ended up giving me money for the detergent because I asked eventually.

Being able to talk about this… It's honestly just relieving. It's not really shameful at all. I just want to talk about it in general because of how much of an issue it's become and just kind of how much it's tearing me up.