Dear duders,
I am a single 23-year-old dude and I go to school and live at home with my family. I was a straight-A student until I hit the 8th grade and my life has gone downhill since. I go to community college and have been going since 2007, when I graduated from high school. I've dropped out of tons of classes and haven't really made any progress towards any sort of transfer or degree. I sign up for a bunch of important classes I need to take, and then I start off strong, doing all the homework and whatnot, and then I start blowing it later down the line and end up dropping out of the classes. I always promise myself that I will do better the next semester, but then the pattern repeats itself. My mom is convinced that I am going to be stuck in school forever. My sister says I should drop out entirely and just get a job because I have no chance of succeeding. I am a communications major and my father wanted nothing more than for me to get educated and have a college degree. If I get a college degree, I'll be the first in my family to do so. It seems like a nice goal, but I know my sister will beat me to it. She is going to a different community college but is already planning to transfer. I am convinced that no respectable school would accept someone like me at this point.
My pop was murdered in 2007 over a financial dispute between himself and a business partner. Two days before that happened, the last thing we ever spoke about was my future. He was so worried about me going nowhere. He just asked me what I wanted to be and what I wanted to do. I didn't know. I still don't. What kills me is that if he could see me now, the exact thing he was worried about is coming true. I wish I could be like all my old friends and know exactly what I wanted out of high school and have had the motivation to just go for it and get it done, but I don't.
I have a lot of different hobbies and interests but I'm not good at any of them. I skateboard, but I can't land a trick to save my life. I play guitar, but I don't play often enough to be good and give up halfway through learning a song because a certain section is hard for me to play. No one I know who are in bands wants to play the kind of music I like, which makes it harder to get something going. I joined the wrestling team in high school and was in the best shape of my life, and then I quit because it was getting hard to balance that and school. I almost didn't graduate high school and I was told by a teacher to just get a GED instead.
I also don't do very well in the workplace. I just quit my last job because I have just moved to a new city and they would not let me work in a store closer to my home. I have worked many shitty retail jobs and hated all of them for different reasons. I always get shit for my work ethic since I don't give a fuck and never try my best. I figured it would be a good idea to focus on school instead but I'm not even doing that right.
I currently don't have any friends around to talk to as two of them have been deployed to Afghanistan and the others have moved away, or gone off to college in other cities or states. Even when those guys were around, we NEVER had any serious discussions about anything at all. It was always fucking around and while it brought us together in a tight group, I always wished I had someone to talk to about anything that was on my mind. I wasn't too worried about this, as my family and I have moved to a new city. I was thinking I would make new friends here somehow, right?
I thought moving to a new city would be the change I needed. I figured I could lose some weight, get some new clothes, and reinvent myself. I have done NONE of those things. I am going to a new community college but I am falling into the exact same pattern. I haven't done any of the homework for my classes up to this (the halfway) point and I know I'll end up dropping out of at least one, if not all of them at some point.
I just sit at home by myself in my room surfing on the internet or playing video games. I don't do much else. I read comics and lots of novels. These are the only ways I have any fun anymore. I have no one to call to hang out, no one to talk to. It's getting sad. I start to think shitty thoughts with no logical basis.
People tell me I am turning out to be like my father: big, charming, same sense of humor, the love for family. I have everything he has except for being a little shorter, and not nearly as successful as he was. I have never known a greater man. He was big, tough, smart and he stood up for what was right, even if it put him in danger. He even got his ankle broken helping a police officer who was being beaten in a parking lot outside of his workplace. He was that kind of guy.
All I can wonder when I think about these things is: what happened to me? I really wish I could fix everything that was wrong with me but I don't know why I don't care about anything and I wouldn't know where to start fixing.
Has anyone been in this kind of position before? I am truly lost. Thanks for reading if you did read this.
Log in to comment