u/maudibo-de-sodium

As someone who never really had to out in effort to succeed in school, i come to realise that this advantage has become an handicap and i wish to deal with it before it does the same to me.

Any advices?

I finish highschool 6 years ago, started college after that. I wanted to do art since primary school, never been greatat it but i wasn't bat either.

Now i take the test to get into the only art college of my whole country, hundred of condidats. I succeeded, great! But i just don't feel it i go to school like i usually do but at one point i just don't want to anymore the idea of going to school frustrate me, doing my homework is a mental war i lose repeatedly until the last moment, spent half of the first semester at home hiding in my room wondering what was wrong. Then i go back to school again after a month a friend ask me if am well, i said "no, i dislike my life."

I did not realise how true that was.

Obviously i failed that year, and got laid down (that the rule there, if you fail the first year you're out)

Anf i am so lost i decide let me take a year off, maybe i'll find something else i want to do with myself. I was really into sport and i wanted to put on some muscle always been on the skinny side and being on the receiving end of multiple beatings did not help my self confidence.

So on top of lifting weights, i started doing boxing, two activities i really enjoyed, but i still did not know what to do with myself.

I thought about going pro, but realistically that was a dumb thing and mainly because even though i loved sport and boxing i still was not putting enough of myself into it.

So the years is ending and my dad beg to try again with with the art school and another one focus on sport. I have to take a test in order to be admitted to both. So i do ad he ask simce i know he is just worried and at least i won't be wasting away in my room no more.

I failed the sport school test, but succeeded to the art one (again). I spent a whole year off, i know what to expect, i have experience the Stress of college. It will be alright.

Except it's not. Same thing, this time i went until the third year of my bachelor until i failed, which was last year, and i have to start again.

Now let's talk about the real issue, because i have one, i simply did not know what. But i had hypothesis.

I thought about me not liking art anymore, but that not the case, i still enjoy drawing thinking about drawing seeing other drawings.

simple laziness, then i learn that it was routed into something else and never as simple as it seems.

I look at my porn addiction, or my heavy consumption of media and videos games, and latter realised that i wasn't as dependent on these things as i thought. I spent time without any of those and it was never really an issue until something happens that i found either stressful, depressing, frustrating or some others. I still believe i depend too much on those but they are not and where never the main issue.

Then i thought about some other thing, what of something was wrong with my mind? Maybe that why i was never able to pull myself out of the gutter?

So i look into that and rediscovered ADHD and i became obsessed, i believed it was the answer to my issues, not because it was but because i wanted an answer and it was a great excuse to absolve me of the results of my actions. I never got i diagnosis but i realised that i was not neurodivergent.

So i went to doctors k. From the healthy gamer (i saw a bunch of his clip before and since i have no access to psychiatrist i thought why not?)

He had a video on a subject, the puer eternis, and i recognise myself in a lot of the things he talked about so i thought: yesss!!! Here is the answer i had been looking for, maybe finally i'll be able to put the work in order to fix myself for the better.

That was last year, and i already mentioned above how my academic year ended, so you can certainly see how that solution went for me.

Now i am not discounting any of the previous possibilities, i don't know how or why my brain act like it does, and i have spent the longest time believing that i should be able to fix my own mind and that i was in total control of my actions befor realising that no, while that is still no excuse, i do not have completed control over my mind.

Last month i had a talk my older sister, she was telling me how a friend of her husband, who is a doctor told her that she might be suffering or have suffered from depression after she confessed to him that she had forgotten a huge part of her life prior to 2016, not fully just that the details are muddied (i don't know if to believe him or not since he doesn't specialise in psychiatry, but i definitely know less than him.).

Know why am i bringing my sister in this? Well it is because of what happened in 2016. Now whqt happened in 2016 you might wonder.

The 4th January 2016 i lost my mother. I still don't know how or why, i know she wasn't well and that's that.

That whole discussion made me think again about my situation and things started making a lot more sense.

You see 2020 - 2021 was the period i started looking for a cause and a fix, but not when i realised i had issues, even befor that (i have no idea how your grade works but we follow the french system since we use to be one of their colonie) in 3eme a year after she passed i had made some observations

I did not draw as much as i used to even though i enjoyed it, i watching anime even though i wanted to, i became even more reclusive that i was before that and my hygiene took a hit i was never the clean kind of individual bit it became outright nasty, also my porn usage went overload, video games same thing, sleep schedule went through the window etc...

I thought it was normal you know, just a part of growing up.

Anyway, i have observed a patern, wich i tried to break without success, i believed it goes like this right: i would be fine not distress not happy just existing, then something would happen so i would go hide into my fantasy for a time and then i would look myself in the mirror and decide to do better so i would wake up early, clean my room, wash my clothes, be more active and it will succeed... For a time i'd feel better, i'd do better, i'd be better; then something happens that frustrat, distress or stress me and i'd go right back in the dark place.

Most often that event will be me falling at something or perceiving something as a failure ( i am very afraid of failing even before my mom died i was).

The reality os that although thind do happen that way, there is never a middle ground, what i believed to be a middle ground is me being less sinical.

I have also observed that since 2021 thing gotten worse, i would have these periods of dark thoughts more often and for much longer and i slowly become harder and harder to get myself out of there.

My solution to that was to open myself up, i have people who love me and who would be ready to help, except they can't because they have their own issues to deal with.

So here i am, 10 year later, lower than i have ever been, and hoping for a salvation i know will only come frome me. People can and will help but none of what they will do will mean anything unless I do my part.

But i don't want to, i am tired of looking, hoping, trying. Sure i haven't given it my everything bit to me that just mean that i will most likely never, if saving myself isn't motivation enough then you know.

I just haven't found the strength to do it yet.

But i will and then i will truly be free.