[CW: depression] What the fuck am I doing with my life?
Basically title. Ever since my father died when I was at the young age of 9, my life has been on a downward trajectory. I got bullied at my middle school. I contracted some unknown disease related to my stomach which manifests itself through taking my energy away and making me depressed (also a lot of growling, gasses, diarrhea cuz of nervousness when I went to school and had an exam etc.). Of course the healthcare system in my third world prison has no idea what the fuck is going on. I tried both private and public healthcare, and both of them basically told me to fuck off.
Then after that, because I at the time lived with my grandma, and she got some unknown virus that caused her liver to shut down, even though she made it in the end, I was still forced to relocate to my mom and stepdad's house. This probably was the worst period of my life, mainly because of this asshole. First off, he didn't physically assault me, at least not until the very end. No, he instead constantly kept arguing with me about absurd conspiracy theories, even forcing me to stay late into the night, even though I had school early in the morning. Like, it got so bad, I kept avoiding eye contact with him at all costs, lest I wanted to trigger an unskippable NPC cutscene, filled with gay lobbies and anti-vax nonsense. Then he gradually started restricting stuff like the PC, not because I did anything bad, but because I correctly pointed out that no, warmups wouldn't have made a difference in my ankle sprain when I landed awkwardly. At the end he pushed me because of some stupid lie I made up so I wouldn't have to talk with him, causing me to start planning to get out of there as soon as I can.
And I ended up doing so, in fact, I went out with style, as I was going to first celebrate New Year's eve with my friends in the capital city, and only then would I relocate to my old home. That was, in the last 10 years, probably the only point where I thought I might actually be able to have a normal life, friends, a girlfriend, confidence in myself and maybe even figure out what the fuck was happening in my guts. But of course, If that did happen, I wouldn't be writing this story now, would I?
So of course after about 2-3 months of me arriving from that trip and back home, I get into a spat with my friends because of, as Tony Soprano would say, "normal teenage shit". I didn't do so well being on alcohol the last 2 times we went out, so they thought I couldn't control myself and whatnot (completely ignoring the 2 other times where I was completely fine). We make up in the end, but they basically ice me out of the friend group, giving me no choice but to cut them off completely.
And so, here we are. After all that I really was already starting to feel pretty fucked up. No father, health, friends etc. But what really got me deep in depressing thoughts was the fact I was basically forced to enroll in some dipshit local college, which I was pretty much SPECIFICALLY trying to avoid. I simply can't fucking stand going to this same fucking town for 4 more fucking years after high school. It's like, at this point I have nothing to cling on to. Even my education, where I was pretty much a straight A (except we grade with numbers 1-5, so a 5) student throughout, which I thought would give me at least some form of agency over my life, has proven to be completely useless due to some bullshit, random factors outside my control.
TL:DR - I'm not really sure what to do. At this point, I just want someone to talk to, and not exactly some reactionary lib morons from . Basically, in my rural area, there really aren't any jobs except seasonal ones. So I would really like some help in that sense, especially in tech, since I'm already pretty deep in and I use linux pretty much everywhere (also reading Linux for beginners, but goddamn if I didn't start it like 3 times and never finished it, at least I kept notes last time so I can just catch up). Any help is sincerely appreciated.
I found going to a local tertiary education collage right out of highschool to be a really good experience, I met some really good people (and some shit people too!), and it was a chance to actually work out who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do. I hope you come to begrudgingly enjoy it like I did.
You're maybe in the USA so this might not be helpful, but you could have a look into free / accessible mental health care for younger people where you live, I know I got free counselling until I turned 26 that really helped me (if youre in australia I can give you some links)
Things dont necessarily get easier as you get older, but in my experience you get better at managing how you respond.
Life's tough, dont be too hard on yourself when you're struggling.
I hope you come to begrudgingly enjoy it like I did.
Well I doubt that. I mean ultimately even though this school sucks (like, half the pcs not working or having either a mouse or keyboard when the assignment is supposed to be done on them type of sucks), I think ultimately my quite apparent hatred for the college stems from the accumulation of all of the factors of the above, and also the fact that I gave all this effort for, in the end, pretty much fuck all. Like, I can't tell you how many times I stressed myself out over some of these fucking exams and grades, striving to get the best result every time, only to in the end realize that I could have landed in the same spot with half the effort. Literally would've been the same result if I just gave half the effort. In the end, I feel like I'm just refusing to play this fucking game. If I'm gonna do anything, it's gonna be alone, of my own volition at this point.
You're maybe in the USA so this might not be helpful, but you could have a look into free / accessible mental health care for younger people where you live
Yeah, no. As I already said in another comment, Eastern Europe, and mental healthcare is pretty much non-existent over here. Maybe in the capital, but again, don't really have the logistics for that.
Sorry I didnt see your other comment re you location.
I dont mean to sound patronizing or slinging you a 'just keep smiling buddy' message, but it feels like youre in a pretty ruminating negative spiral, honestly I think collage or similar will still be good, it brings a change in routine, and you will make more connections with people. I met some really inspiring teachers, i have a couple of close friends from school. There's silverlinings to be had.
I think relating to the effort you feel was wasted, its more about what youve learnt, and will be able to do kore effectively next time than a spot in a school you dont fancy. When I was in school we still were able to hand write assignments, but I understand the computer access is a killer.
Anyway sorry, I feel like I may seem like a pratt, I hope youre having a better day today.
I don't have any advice or help for you because I'm in a somewhat similar situation as you. I was also a good student (not quite straight A, but close enough) and thought my education would also give me some form of agency over my life. That, of course, turned out to be completely untrue due to various factors outside my control. I also thought moving out of my small town would give me a fresh start and allow me to finally live a normal life... which never really happened either.
All I can say is I'm sorry this is happening to you, comrade. If you need to talk or vent, my DMs are open
I also thought moving out of my small town would give me a fresh start and allow me to finally live a normal life... which never really happened either.
I mean, honestly, I feel like this is really best summed up by a certain GOT scene if you've ever watched it
spoiler
In the scene where Jon comes to convince Mance Rayder to surrender to Stannis, he holds this whole speech about how he's endangering his whole people by not surrendering. Mance probably correctly assesses that if he did, his people wouldn't even follow him anymore. At the end, Jon says:
"You're making a big mistake"
To which Mance replies:
"Making my own mistakes is all I've ever wanted"
And that's how I feel. Just let me make my own mistakes. My own decisions. Instead of practically locking me up in this rural hellhole with absolutely 0 prospects for the future.
Let me ask, do you make your own food? Do you eat out a lot?
Well I am living with my grandma currently again, so she mostly cooks something up for lunch. As for breakfast and dinner, I mostly make sandwiches or just chop up some processed meat or whatever. I guess if you're asking about the health issues, not much can really change in terms of food I'd say rn. I mean 1 of our ministers literally said that you can survive on 2 eggs for the whole day, just absolute fucking madness here.
One out of 3 times a day you're eating decent. Youll have to do more than cured meats and such. The human diet leans more on grains and legumes. Our nutrition can totally determine even our mental health.
This isnt to say this'll cure how you feel, but its a start. Self care.
I think you're doing fine on linux, its one of those things that need to be hands on rather than just read about. For work while it's not well paid nor consistent I'd recommend those data rater jobs if you have even so-so access to internet. It'll at least get some income coming in ideally.
Oh I think you missed it, I am using linux concurrently, I'm just reading up about new commands and ways to expand upon that knowledge. In fact, rn I'm writing this from an Arch laptop using a tiling wm, whereas on my PC I have another Arch on my SSD (mostly used for gaming and whatnot) and Gentoo on my hard drive (don't really use this one too much, probably because I fucked up something with the new e-profiles or whatever so now it's just refusing to update, I tried some things initially to fix it, but got bored and )
Anyway, can you shoot me a dm about that data rater or whatever? Never heard of it, and ideally, If I can get 400-500$/month, that's more than enough to survive right now. I honestly just wanna join some tech communities or something since I am really lacking in any real connections right now, especially in terms of trying to get a job.
Probably did I was groggily responding to it. I like Debian based distros best personally.
Welocalize, Telusinternational, Dataannotation, Outlier, Lionbridge are names of some of the companies. There're communities dedicated to them on where you can find out how to apply, get tips to pass the tests etc. 400-500 a month while located in the US is totally feasible outside of the holiday season.
I'm not sure how much they pay international raters, but on some of these companies linkedins they're always whining they need more of xyz in some Euro country.
If you need references there's a /r/bemyreference on the hellsite, so far I've had great experiences with it (idk if they've had good experiences with me, I don't always pass on the phone and sketched one interviewer out).
I'm not a medic and sorry if you've already tried this, but your gut and mood issues sound a lot like a food allergy. Did you try cutting for two weeks the typical allergens? Try one at a time with gluten, lactose/casein, animals, legumes (soy derivatives in particular), nuts (peanuts in particular) and see if anything improves
I really haven't tbh. It is a problem though that here, everything is gluten and meat. But I'll see what I can do.
Also, you're at least more helpful than these fucking docs here. Some old boomer hag literally told me when I attempted to find out what in the hell was going on: "Oh, you're just sitting at your computer too much". Like yeah, I'm sure that's what it is lol. Now I don't really know much about medicine either, but I absolutely refuse to believe there is any credence whatsoever to that fucking statement.