So, as the title says I had some legal issues at the very beginning of my adult life.
The actual events were stupid but (and I really don't like defaulting to this, but I think it may be a possibility) I'm Hispanic with dark brown skin and live in America, so I think that may have had something to do with the charges put on me. At 18 I got into an argument with a family member at my house because she wouldn't let me back inside. The police came, we still don't know who called them, but they ended up arresting me and charging me with burglary and resisting officer without violence because I did not understand what was happening when they started cuffing me and protested, I was 18 and was at my own house, it didn't seem possible.
A little less than a year later while the case was still open I dated a girl who (and I deeply regret this but didn't think it would be this big a deal) I cheated on. When she found out, since she knew about my current court case in order to get back at me she lied to the police and said and said I had stolen and used her credit card at a gas station and I ended up getting arrested for burglary and some specifically named charge about possession of stolen ID. Thankfully those charges were dropped almost immediately when my family spoke to the girl and explained how horrible what she had done to me was, but I had to sit in jail with no bond due to being arrested while out on bond until my court date came around and the girl's affidavit that she had lied came to the judges attention.
In the end it took years and I had to take a probation agreement for a year but I walked away with no conviction when I had just turned 22.
However now I'm nearly 27 and while I am further and further from this and try harder and harder to further my life and advance as a person and seek opportunities, the more these arrests that resulted in no convictions come back to bite me.
Wanna get that nice apartment your girlfriend wants? Oops, sorry, no.
Studied really hard to get a bachelors and are interviewing for well paying jobs so you can finally stop being a broke college student? Oops, you're not getting hired ANYWHERE
Accepted it and worked as a waiter or bartender in nice restaurants and want to use your experience to go work at a nice hotel chain in a management position? Oh, man, how weird, NO!
Eventually accept you got a degree for nothing so decide to start your own business and do freelance work? Well, Turns out all the clients that would actually pay you more than a bartender makes even do background checks on freelancers! You'll get a good one once in a while, but the experience pales in comparison to the arrest record at your next interview!
Want to try going to law school so you can maybe help people so this injustice doesn't happen to them? Wow, sorry, you can't go to these
Used AirBNB literally dozens of times on 3 different continents over several? Sorry, we changed our policy, nobody arrested even if not convicted can use our service anymore. Guess you can never go on a fucking vacation again!
Get lucky and have a friend who works at a good company and offers you a high paying job that might fix your permanent poverty issue? Damn, you got REALLY far in the process on that one but sorry!
Fuck it, maybe I can join the military! Oh, sorry, no we won't take you
Its just CONSTANT! The longer I go on the more I think I really did get my whole life fucked up right out the gate, just ruined from ever having a successful life IMMEDIATELY upon being considered an adult!
I'm not really depressed, I've been depressed before, I am not that. But I was always a really smart and high achieving student. I got the highest SAT score in my county for my graduating class and got a scholarship because of it, languages are my hobby and I speak 4 fluently and 2 others intermiadetely but I always work on, I'm confident, considered attractive by most, by all means I was told I was going to have a great life. I've never really experienced racism or had many issues besides internal and mental health struggles that are very very common, nothing crazy, but it just seems like these events that I feel more happened to me than are something I should feel responsible for and accept the consequences of, which happened a longer and longer time ago every day and by all means due to the fact that I wasn't convicted shouldn't have become an impediment are a CONSTANT roadblock and as time goes on and I see my peers advancing and becoming adults I'm blocked over and over.
It just seems like these arrests that didn't lead to convictions keep fucking up everything and living in the internet age, like no matter what I do the mere fact of the arrests will impede me from advancing and will keep me stuck in perpetual struggle, often needing to borrow money from family and being stuck in what I would have thought to be jobs I would only have to do while I was a college student.
Part of me wants to move to another country but my home is here, my entire family is here, I've lived abroad in England and France for 6 months and 18 months respectively and while those places are cool and exciting, I like American culture, I like the business and work culture here. I wouldn't be satisfied having to adapt to a different culture for my entire life and likely having to give up on dreams I had of jobs and goals that exist in the form I dreamed of in America, like being a criminal lawyer helping people so they don't get fucked like me.
I don't want to die, in fact I can't smoke Marijuana anymore because any time I do I get paralyzing death anxiety and think of nothing but my impending death and the futility of my mortality against the barrage of time. I stay very up to date on life extension research and technology, Ive considered when I get more money paying to go get a second bachelors in biology and going to medical school to participate in the research even.
But it seems more and more like ill never get more money. I've had brief windfalls, i was an esrly miner of Bitcoin and paid off the few student loans I took with money from that in 2017. This year I made some money on the stock market and was able to catch up on over 2 years of debt I had accumulated and buy a car for the first time. A few years ago a major company hired me for contract work only 3 months after I had started my freelancing career, and when after several interviews they offered me the job, they mentioned a background check and when I told them of the arrests without conviction they immediately said "We can just skip the background check" , implying that my arrests alone would've precluded me from getting the position I had earned,, and for 3 months I had the type of life with the type of job I thought I would have after college. Like, it isn't constantly terrible, I'm a person, I have good times and bad, but it's never constant, its always long periods of difficulty and then a lucky break of some kind.
I get turned down for good jobs constantly. I can't get a fucking AirBNB anymore. I had money I wanted to use to buy a home to rent out to have an income stream and I was barred from buying it. I tried to join the military as a way out and was turned away. I got rejected from law school despite an alright GPA and a very good LSAT score. My last 2 girlfriends and I were, separately, 4 years apart, turned down for BOTH of their favorite apartments and many others and had to go for admittedly fine but not super nice apartments without official lease agreements or month to month renting where it took forever for the landlord to fix things. Even a good job where I explained everything AND my friend was the manager who tried to hire me turned me away after more than a month of interviews, forms, training and even an out of state trip.
This shit fucking sucks. Its been nearly a fucking decade and these stupid fucking arrests just keep fucking with me. I don't want to be 30 and be pretty much the same place I was at in life as when I was 22, but thats 3 years away and it looks like thats more and more likely by the day.
Why fucking live if I can never advance in life or be successful just because of some bullshit charges THAT WERE FUCKING DROPPED from literally SIX MONTHS AFTER I TURNED 18.
I really do consider killing myself more and more every time this happens, and incidences have increased HUGELY in the last 3 years, or since I finished college. It wouldn't be hard. I've had a lot of friends die from fentanyl overdoses, and I have a few friends who are currently addicts that relapse every now and then. They would tell me where to get fentanyl, and it seems like a very fast and painless death.
I'm not exactly there yet, I guess I can keep trying, but shit just keeps getting fucked up for me and my life isn't moving at all. It isn't just me, this affects my partners and eventually if I got married, my wife.
I'm pretty sure, however, if my current girlfriend left me and I didn't have some decent consistent, well paying job at that time, that I'd give up. Get some fentanyl and lights out, no more fighting an uphill battle, no more bullshit, no more having to live a life that was sabotaged at the very start.
I really don't see many counterarguments. I'm not getting the life I expected, life is WAY harder for me than I feel is fair and I just am not willing to go through the rest of my life as a paycheck to paycheck, working class bullshit person. I'm not depressed, I just don't want this life if it stays this way, I don't view living on its own as enough of an inherent good to be worth putting up with living a low class lifestyle and never getting to accomplish any of my dreams.
Are there any people who have been through something similar? Or any counterarguments? I don't want to die, but I don't want to live this way because of a bullshit system either.
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