u/Bootsy122

I hope this isn’t triggering or disrespectful to others. If so let me know so that I can be more careful in the future.

Does anyone else relate to being offended by labels that define your behavior but you feel like it’s unfair because you were homeschooled and kind of got forced into them? Socially awkward and introverted are the biggest ones that I’ve considered being true. My family has suggested that I’m autistic to explain my social struggles. I’ve wondered if I am asexual to explain my lack of interest in dating, but actually, I would date if it didn’t feel so intimidating.

This is hard to explain and I want to make it clear that some of these labels, in fact, are legitimate for people. For me though, some of these terms were placed on me by others and I’ve never wanted to identified with them. Not because I’m in denial (maybe it is denial) or don’t want to be associated with them, but because I question whether it’s true. What if I was raised in a public school environment and had constant social interaction? Would I have still struggled? There are people who have normal childhoods but still have behaviors that fit these labels. But then again, maybe that is how some of these things become a part of us…

I guess my main point is it feels different to be raised in a normal way and discover these things about yourself compared to being raised abnormally and questioning them when others suggest it to be true. I push back when people suggest I am these things but maybe I’m just stubborn or confused.

It feels like I have to be extra precautious when socializing. Like, I don’t want to give away too much about myself for fear of what the interaction will feel like. I try to keep things as surface as possible, but I am left without any close relationships and feel immensely alone.

It may sound weird but I like to think of it like this. Do you recall that map in Halo 3 (Sandbox, I think) where you would get shot at by the “Guardians” of you tried to escape the boundaries? Me and my brother used to play that level on Forge and try to escape the boundaries by placing a tunnel piece that could block the rocket fire and keep us alive.

Eventually you could get pretty far, but the gunfire was non-stop. That’s what it feels like to be an adult with this background. It’s like I’m out of bounds, and being fired at by the “Guardians” and I have to keep carefully moving the tunnel piece further and further.

I didn’t ask to be like this. I don’t know what it feels like to be normal. Every time I open up about not feeling normal, people just say, “what is normal?”

I’ve been at this for a some time now. The truth is though, I will always “be at this.” I will always have to work a little harder than everyone else to have the things I thought were normal.

It’s like I have learned the hard lesson that nothing in life is given. You come into this world with nothing and you leave with nothing. But why was I forced to be so in tune with that kind of wisdom?

It’s like this… some people are born rich. Some are born poor. Some have a disorder or a handicap. There is a definition, a story, a label, an understanding. But what is this? What is “being homeschooled” and it having a negative consequence on your life? Why is it so hard to talk about?

I keep seeing people on this subreddit and it makes me so fortunate to have found so many people that understand. Even with how varied our experiences are, there is a fundamental understanding about how permanently altering the experience truly is.

There is nuance to the negative side effects of homeschooling. It isn’t fully understood yet. I keep telling my therapist that despite everything I’ve overcome thus far, the worst is still yet to come. It sounds grim, but I truly believe it. There is only more embarrassment, misunderstanding, feeling small, feeling alienated, isolation, depression, and fighting ahead of me.

I am two weeks into having my old job back. It came out of no where. My boss just randomly hit me up one day while I was binge drinking and binge watching the Boys to drown my sorrows. I had just lost another job that just didn’t fit me. But my old job is better because I know the people and I know the work.

Unfortunately it doesn’t come with any benefits. It’s seasonal and I go back to college in the Fall. They are going to work with me to schedule around it and keep me on. I originally left to focus on studies. I wanted to give myself the freedom to experience my first time on an actual campus. Since then I’ve been in a mental health hospital twice and been to therapy once a week.

Looking back and reflecting on things, I’ve grown more as a person in the past few months since starting in-person college classes, than I have in my entire life. Before I was never able to come to terms with the severity of my homeschooling experience, but now I can look at it in a way that doesn’t hurt as much. I still struggle of course. I don’t really have close friends. I have no health insurance. I’m broke and in debt. All things that I can make efforts to change over time.

I want to keep reflecting like this. It puts into perspective my realities and challenges me to consider what is true and what is made up in my head. I also like the term Homeschool Survival Story compared to Homeschool Success Story. Maybe there is something better but I just don’t like saying I’m a homeschool success story because I’m in college or have a job.

TLDR; this is a long rant because I just got back from a one-week study abroad in Europe with my peers who are younger than me and I feel extremely depressed and out of place in this world despite everything I have been through. I also recently read Homeschooled by Stefan Block and am inspired to share my story.

I don't really know how to start this so I'll just start ranting. I think I'm going to die from loneliness because I can't relate to people. Maybe I'll just pass away in my 60's or die by my own hand before then, but I don't want to be alive like this.

If you knew me you would think that I have everything figured out considering where I came from. I'm going to graduate with a bachelor's degree in business in a year. I just got back from a one week study abroad in Europe and I have a job for the summer lined up.

But underneath, I want to start over. I'm completely ashamed of who I am. I resent all of my successes because they only end up as evidence for why homeschooling was a good thing for me. But it wasn't. I swear it wasn't.

I can't relate to people. No matter how hard I try I just can't figure it out. I suppose with time I might reach some level of contentment with my relationships, but getting there is hell. I feel like I started being a human at eighteen. Everything before that was fake. It was an accident.

I'm 27 now, and so close to being done with college. But I feel no pride. I feel nothing but shame and resentment. I am ashamed of myself for failing to be a friend to others and I resent my parents for homeschooling me. What good is education without people to share it with? What good is life without anyone to share it with?

My parents knew they would die decades before me and yet they still decided to deprive me of the necessary means of socialization. I think we can all understand now that homeschooling deprives the child of the necessary development that comes with public education. I just read Homeschooled by Stefan Block, and I finally felt like the words were put together for me. Even though he was homeschooled for a few years and I was homeschooled for my whole life, I felt like he understood exactly what it is like. Fortunately for him he was able to get back into the public school system and ended up with some kind of life. But me? There is no story like mine.

I have three siblings too. Three of us you would think understand each other and where we came from. But I am the most outspoken one. I'm unpopular with my mom and dad because I see how bad it was. I try to tell myself that they had my best intention at heart but I don't think they truly understand what they took from me.

I'm 27 and I have been through phases where I believed that I was neurodivergent by my genetics. I believed for a little while when I was 17-18 years old that I had a disorder called selective mutism. That for some reason, at stressful moments, I would be physically unable to speak. I've wondered if I'm autistic. I've been diagnosed with major depression, but what I really think happened was a corruption of nature. Kids are not supposed to be isolated from the village.

I believe that my mom fell for a misguided fad. In the early 2000's the internet was allowing vast amounts of information to flood every mind and my mom picked up on one idea, homeschooling. It was a perfect storm. My two older siblings were getting into trouble at school and the teachers were hounding my mom to correct their behavior. But my mom realized that it wasn't my siblings. It was society. After all, society had done a number on her.

Just like Block's mother, mine was mistreated by this world. My mom was moved from town to town and had to restart over and over again. She was rejected and torn down and had to find her people only to find herself pregnant and abandoned by her parents (goddammit). My dad and she had no choice but to union. Strangely enough the one time my family had a family therapy session, the therapist identified this detail in the first session. But my parents were offended and we never went back, even though we needed it badly.

My mom's straitlaced parents were skeptical at first but even they were impressed by how my mom was able to turn my sibling's behavior around. She had us up and ready in the morning and tucked in before nightfall, every night. Even I will admit that the early days were impressive. I was learning Latin at six years old. I think there were gaps though. I wasn't learning my place in society. I wasn't learning about who I was. I was missing fundamental developmental stages. What good is Latin to a six year old? What good is all that knowledge with no one to share it with?

Do not mistake me and my siblings for little geniuses. Quite frankly without testing there was no way to know, but my oldest brother was always treated like one. My poor sister was judged harshly for not being up to par with her two year older peer. God, her story alone could fill pages and every one would be stained with tears. The only girl in a house full of unsocialized boys. I grieve for my sister today ever since I became an adult and realized the weight of her and my unfortunate lot in life.

Only the early days I would actually consider authentic homeschooling. By 2009, my family had been swept away by the evil Great Recession and moved into the dark thralls of America's lower middle class. At this point how can my parents homeschool us? It makes no economical since anymore. It would be cheaper to institutionalize us. But we continue with it anyway. My brother, a teenager, raging with hormones and growing into a world full of the internet of conspiracy theories and dark content. God only knows the content that he absorbed all alone with no one to explain it to him.

My poor sister discovered the internet too. She networked with various people across the world. Her first boyfriend was virtual. Whether he was real or not is not that important quite honestly. And me and my younger brother. I believe we bonded greatly because of my stunted development and his childishness. We were five years apart but understood each other like twins. We filled our days with utter nonsense that children create and were content with our lot. At this point, what can be done? No one wanted to go to public school. We were fully indoctrinated into my mom's belief that society was evil and that we were special.

Where was my dear old dad during all of this? Well, quite like Block's parents, the father in these situations was too occupied with his work. My dad was always too busy. He was always stressed out. He had no time. But he did have time for some moments that I still hold onto dearly. I look back at these days with fondness, not agony. That is part that I can't rationalize. How, during all this unorganized development, that I now believe has led to my own modern idealizations of suicide and "starting over", does one look back with fondness at times like these? I guess it just wasn't bad in the moment. Just irresponsible.

My mom became depressed. We moved in with my aunt and her boyfriend, thus technically making us homeless for a short while. We didn't have a home to even do our homeschooling in. My cousin's dad's house was like a manor. me and my brothers were separated by an entire floor between our parents. There was zero oversight. Zilch.

I loved it. I still remember the smell of the basement. Like new construction. I played Skyrim on his giant TV. All day long. What more could a thirteen year old boy want? Living his days in fantasy. But underneath there was a darkness brewing.

We finally moved back into our own home. My mom though it would be a revitalization of our family and a rebranding of the homeschool, but in reality, my older siblings were swept away by drugs and alcohol. My sister was imprisoned for her crimes, but somehow my brother escaped iron bars for his interest in experimental drugs. Why the hell did my sister even go to jail? I will never understand. People partake in that kind of activity all the time and get away with it, but by accident she didn't.

At this point, I was educating myself. My mom would purchase or reuse old textbooks and math CD-roms for us to use. She signed us up at a coop to learn harder subjects like high school algebra and science. I barely grasped algebra 1 and completed half of my Teaching Textbooks Geometry CD. That was all the math that I graduated high school with. That was the Indiana standard.

The story goes the same it seems. The homeschooling is inadequate and by the time the child becomes an adult they are unprepared for life. I just realized at 23 that by the time I was 27 I wouldn't have made any better progress in life than if I had just started college. Those first five years of adulthood are a mystery to me. Time spent in a way that I struggle to understand today. But alas, here I am. 27 and only a couple semesters from getting a powerful piece of paper. I'm 27 and I've never had sex. I'm 27 and I've never had a girlfriend. I'm 27 and I've never been kissed. I'm 27 and I've never been held. I'm 27 and I've never even had a friendship with anyone other than my brothers, sister and my parents.

I feel like it could all go away. If I wanted it badly enough I could end it all. But I hold on to some kind of hope. Maybe it's fear. Yes, most realistically it is fear. It is biology. I don't want to end it? Like all of us I want to reproduce. The thing about me though is that I am what gets left behind in evolution. There is no reproduction. My parents decided for me that I would not reproduce.

Please do not mistake me for an incel. I am not even familiar with that language. I don't understand the whole red pill, black pill stuff. I am just like any human, with an interest in what it would be like to be a father. To give life to another human and raise them up. Isn't that all most of us can ask for? How many of us will become billionaires or athletes or famous actors? The answer is less than 1%. But that simple life. The one my parents had and their parents had. That is enough for me to be happy. But it was decided for me that I will have to find my own way in life.

I said I went to Europe to start this long rant. It was only a week, but it was the first time I ever left the United States. It was the first time I planned my own trip across the ocean. I purchased my tickets and I put myself on the plane. I missed my flight, but that is another story. Fortunately they were able to re-book me and I only missed a day of my study abroad, but still it was devastating.

The reason I continue this long rant is only to express the feeling of being in a foreign land with no one. I may have been with a cohort of my peers (all 5+ years younger than me), but I never felt more isolated. Everyone was speaking another language, but the language I understood the least was that of my own tongue. To stave off loneliness I took whatever opportunity I had to be with people and I went places with my colleagues. But I quickly realized how "left behind" I have become. The way they communicate is entirely foreign to me. I understood the German I took with Duolingo better than I understood English from my fellow Americans. At one point we went to a nightclub and I was left alone. This actually happened twice, but the first time I acted a little crazy and the second time I was just plain sad.

I was like the elephant in the room. Obviously older, different, less social. As the trip went on the more I returned to my true self. By the end of it I was just sleeping the day away in the hotel instead of going out. I missed out on things I may never see again. I was in Vienna and I didn't go and see the palace. I was in Prague and I didn't see the castle. Now I'm back in the USA and I may never see my forties. That is negative self talk and I reject it.

Now I am home. I guess I call it home. I am back to work. Though I slept the whole day away after getting back, unable to pull myself out of my bed, I am trying to get back to it. I am surrounded by my younger peers again for the whole summer. I've taken employment at my college as an orientation leader and will be welcoming future classmates to the school. Everyone is just a kid. But so am I. Just older.

Thus concludes my rant. It is long, but full of things that plague my mind constantly. I hope that some other ex-homeschoolers will relate to it. Or at least offer some feedback as to what I've done wrong or right. I will continue to write. I feel like after reading Homeschooled that it is more important than ever to keep telling my story. And it is more important than ever for you to tell your story too. If you ever wonder whether there is someone out there going through what you went through the answer is yes. And there will be more, unless we do something to change it.