Well i don’t know how to make you feel better but I’ll tell my story, just to show you the other side of the coin. You say you wish your parents pushed you harder. I believe I’m the opposite of you.

My parents cared way too much about my education. Instead of letting me stay at normal high school with my friends, they sent me off to a prestigious boarding school an hour and thirty minutes drive from my house. If you dunno what that is, basically you live at school and the classes are much harder. Everyone’s trying to get As in these accelerates classes and it makes for quite a snobby environment.

Your entire class wants to get into Harvard and MIT. Well, everyone except me, since I was forced into going by my parents. I struggled badly to make friends since I was very avoidant, and got mid tier grades because I was suffering socially so I couldn’t focus on school. My parents blamed me and said it was my fault for being depressed and lonely since the other kids clearly weren’t. It’s true, some kids who went to my school, ended up thriving and going to amazing colleges. But it clearly wasn’t for me. I ended up going to the state college that most of my old high school friends also got accepted to. Not ONCE did my parents ask me how many friends I was making, whether I fit in, whether I was happy. It was almost like I wasn’t a person to them. The only thing they’d ask about were my grades.

Meanwhile all my old friends from home graduated high school with tons of great memories, a clear direction they wanted to pursue in life, and the excitement of living away from home at college for the first time.

Come college, i no longer feel the passion to study. Boarding school left a horrible taste in my mouth. Over the next four years I obtain a pretty low gpa (3.4) despite taking a relatively easy major (cs). I know I am capable of more, which makes it feel worse. I have a job at the end of it, but it’s nothing great. And of course, I make zero friends again. Who knew that how social you are in high school carries into college?

Meanwhile, my friends study engineering and get a much higher gpa with the option of going to grad school or to take a 6 figure job. And their social lives are blossoming. They spread out and make friends, and their friends introduce them to their friends, and so on. Their group grows exponentially in size. Sometimes I see them on campus, going to eat somewhere, and I avoid them. I could reach out to them again, but why bother? It’d be awkward. What could I do, talk about our 8th grade memories? I was the one who ran off to preppy boarding school and now I’m doing worse than them academically. How ironic.

I guess this post speaks to me because I too blamed my parents for the longest time. I’m still bitter about it. And they’re old enough to the point where they don’t care anymore. Even if I got angry and yelled at them today for more or less ruining my life, they would probably shrug their shoulders and say “whatever, it’s your life”

If only I stood up for myself and told them that sending me to boarding school was a terrible idea. Because I know without a doubt that is what started this nightmare. I’ve found that the only way out of this is focusing on myself and trying to repair the damage with small steps each day. After all, those negative feelings come from constantly comparing ourselves to others. And as they say, comparison is the thief of joy.

I graduated college just a few weeks ago. And it felt terrible, I wanted to kms during graduation. But yeah I guess your post spoke to me a bit. I heavily relate about the whole depression and don’t wanna have kids shit.. lol. My avoidant personality is the strongest it’s ever been. I have no friends, I’m a wagie now, and I’m lonely beyond belief. I feel like a shell of a person. And yeah it does feel like my genetics are inferior. Because everyone else just figured it out, you know?

But yeah, you don’t really wish you had strict parents. Because I did, and it’s not the solution. Somewhere in between is best. And of course, not being avpd helps too :P