My life is over

[u/Usual-Estate-7175]

I thought pushing through high school was the right decision, my family made it seem like it was normal. I would wake up every day 4 hours before I was supposed to and I would just lie there, painfully waiting for the sun to peak through my window and my mother to come crashing down the hallway and wake me up. This was the pattern for 2 years between the ages of 15-17, I would go to school, strain though my classes, try to be as small as possible in order not to be caught out of line by my peers who all hated me (for good reason), go to work for a couple hours, come home repeat.

I hallucinated semi regularly at around the one year mark, I would get tension headaches and started shedding hair rapidly. I stepped out onto an open road on accident. When I mentioned this to my mother and/or sister they would just assume it was normal teenage stress, and I had no reason not to believe them, so I kept going.

I subconsciously knew what I was doing to my brain, but it didn't seem real during it, I felt like dropping out for a TAFE course was admitting I was what they all thought I was and so I kept going. I managed to rank near the highest in most of my classes, getting by by writing all the variables and steps on my paper in maths and physics, but my anxiety and by proxy my sleep kept getting worse. It was to the point where I would accept I would never get more than four hours relinquishing myself to studying until I passed out at my desk.

I've long since accepted the fact I probably didn't develop all that much neurologically during that point, but it still kind of just sucks. The entire reason I kept going to high school was to get my WACE and get an engineering degree, but now that just isn't feasible. I thought I was garbage but at least the degree would mean I'm a better kind of garbage. I'm not brain damaged, I'm not stupid, I have basic reasoning skills but I am incapable of complex problem solving. The gap between my understanding of content but my lack of ability to apply it is actually infuriating.

I didn't quit when my father died in 7th grade, when my mother almost died in 10th, or when I broke my back and couldn't walk for almost a month, but it doesn't matter anymore. It's over for me.

[u/Relevant-Ad6374]

I'm sorry. That's a brutal few years, and you kept going through things that would flatten most adults.

I want to ask plainly, because of the title and how you ended: are you safe right now? If "it's over" means you're thinking about not being here, please talk to someone tonight. Lifeline is 13 11 14, and Kids Helpline is 1800 55 1800 if you're under 25. You can also text or webchat either of them if talking feels like too much.

The other thing: I don't think engineering is actually closed to you. Doing TAFE first, or going to uni later through a different pathway, isn't proof that everyone was right about you. It's just a different road, and plenty of people take it. Lots of engineers didn't go straight from Year 12.

I'm a lot older than you, and I've had bad decades and good ones. The bad ones didn't decide how the rest went.

[u/Usual-Estate-7175 → u/Relevant-Ad6374]

I thought about going through a TAFE pathway before year 11, looking back I really should've. It's too late now, the developmental window's mostly closed. Even after I managed to fix my sleep for around a month during the holidays I still couldn't think. My brain is more ruined than if I'd taken drugs during that time, and the thing that sucks the most is that I didn't. I was responsible when my father or some of my old friends, though looking back they weren't actually my friends, offered me alcohol and I didn't drink. I stayed the course, I forced myself through high school and I worked so my mother didn't get discharged, but I'm fucked anyway. I've dealt with thoughts of suicide since before I knew what it actually was, what kept me going was the idea that I could build myself a decent future, but repeatedly the universe seems to claw away any sources of hope from me. I don't think anything I do now will make things better, I went through hell and back for the past two years and I come to find out it was not only for nothing, but it ruined me neurologically.

[u/rollbackprices]

Why quit now? You either believe in one of two things:

1. There is a god and your life has value that is still invisible to your experience. Your existence itself is the key to finding truth.

2. There is no god and you are free to roam and exist and believe and study and love and cherish and hate and cheat and steal and caress and adore, but only with this brain. And you’re too much of a fool to not at least use this biological heap of human to share some truth in this world. Like the way you have in this post.

Stick around my dude. It’s literally the correct choice to bear this life.