k...

Here's some wisdom from a college student that can remember being that age

A) You can relax. High school is important but your grades are not that important, especially not your freshman grades. Colleges want to see steady improvement, not necessarily a 3.96 GPA. You can have an 'off' semester and still get into really really good colleges. Trust me, I had more than one and got into some of the best.
B) Things only get better as you get older. When you are at home and under your parents direct control there is often alot of pressure to please them. It is not a bad thing to want to please your parents, but do not let it get out of control to the point where you obsess over it. When you get a little bit older (3-5 years) you are going to look back at your freshman year and laugh at how differently you see things. What seems like huge life-changing stuff to you now will then seem like 'no big deal'. Just take everything a step at a time and do your best, and if you trip up don't be afraid to ask for help. Just remember that you have PLENTY of time to fix any mistakes and nobody expects perfection from you.

You need to focus and get through the rough time so you can move on. You need to stop cutting yourself immediately and address the suicidal thoughts; if your parents aren't listening get help from your school's resources (try your parents first though). Try to cut down on pushing yourself in too many directions and focus on what you really enjoy doing. Don't worry about building some resume or anything; just pursue your interests and it will come naturally. Try to get some exercise too if you are not; even just jogging is a great way to relieve some of the stresses of being a freshman and your body is a chemical train-wreck right now, so conditioning it with a little exercise will probably make you feel alot better.

Good luck and remember to get help with the cutting and suicidal thoughts first thing. Like tomorrow... not another day wasted! You don't have to live like that and you just need a little nudge getting back on the right track.

Trust me, you've got a bunch of great years ahead of yourself, keep your chin up.

 

I was going to say that life gets better as you get older, but Gator already said!

 

Jeremy, you have alot on your mind right now. I think it's pretty understandable that you have a hard time focusing. Have you thought about getting a tutor to help you out with some of the more difficult classes? I think it's great you are working on getting a GSA in your school. Good luck with that and let me know if you need anything.

 

'Ranting' about these things is a good first step, but please don't leave it there...

Cutting as well as throwing up after you eat can both develop into very serious addictions. I'm not saying that you're currently addicted to either, but cutting and eating excessively are both outlets for emotions that we're not sure how to deal with otherwise.

So try to address some of the underlying things that are bothering you. Deal with the stress. Deal with your orientation. Deal with your grades and school work. It will be tough to do the good things while at the same time stopping the bad things - but you need to.

Let me know if you want to chat more one on one.

 

I want to start with saying that I'm also like a perfectionist, so I have stressed out a lot about grades. my advice on the grades would be that if you don't understand something have a friend that does explain it to you. Then, if you still don't understand it, go ask the teacher.

As for the cutting, try to find some other outlet. For example, when I get worked up about something, I listen to music to calm myself down. You just need to find a different outlet than cutting yourself.

hope this helps

 

Hmmn.. okay so it's been a while since you first posted... how's it going?

GatorFan is 120% correct about things being better when you're older. Well, the things that are bugging you right now, that is. For instance, eventually you realise that grades are as important as you make them. For another, just somehow high school is this totally fucked-up environment that I would say 90% of people do not enjoy that much and have issues with, and college is often a thousand times better and hey if you don't go to college, the "real world" can be annoying but it's not high school.

As you say, you are only 14--give yourself some slack. As far as I can remember, only Grades 11 and 12 really count for college. Maybe it's different now but somehow I doubt that, unless you start totally failing stuff, that you would be hurting your college chances if you were to get Bs in Grades 9 and 10.

I really think something that is very much not stressed enough when people are in high school is that balance in your life is SO vitally important. These are your last years as a non-adult and you should enjoy the fact that you have really, really limited responsibility in many, many different ways before you end up in the stage of life where your decisions are not as... meaningless as they can be right now. Adolescence is a great time to screw up (hopefully not spectacularly) because generally people expect it. *grin*

Something you might want to consider is just because you might have the ideal capacity to have done better at this assignment or that assignment, that doesn't mean that at that point in your life you actually could have done any better. Life is not just about academics to the point where other things don't factor in. You could be suffering from a cold, really stressed out, not sleeping enough, dealing with some personal issue--all those are mitigating factors and you need to recognise them and really appreciate the fact that other stuff going on in your life is going to impact your ability to get good grades and that that is TOTALLY okay. We're not robots...

I had a friend in high school who consistently got higher grades than mine at a time where I pretty much defined myself by my grades, but really, he had no life, and while I don't claim to have had any hugely amazing high school existence, I had a lot more time to myself to do the things I wanted to do. I could theoretically have applied myself as hard as he applied himself and gotten comparable grades but I really don't think I would have enjoyed myself all that much. And when I came out in my 3rd year of university, my grades completely went in the toilet (by my standards, at least... given that it's all relative, I'm pretty sure some of my classmates would have been more than happy with my "toilet-worthy" achievements)... and it was SO worth it. I can't even express how worth it was that I totally stopped caring about being the head of the class for the last 3 years of my degree.

 

There is a definite ditto to what has been said above. High School is such a totally different world and if we try to use it as a measure of what is to come afterwards, it is gonna be such a disappointment. High School is nothing in comparison to what comes after it and what was so important there will have no importance in the real world. In the real world you are measured by who you are and what you can do, not how you look, what you wear, or who you still hang out with.

It is nice to try to live up to expectations of your parents as long as you can agree with them and achieve them, but you also have to put things into a perspective and know it school and grades are all of what you are about, your life is in total imbalance and that is never any good. Life is like a pie, various slices for various aspects, i.e., school, family, friends, church, recreation, down time, etc. If any one part of it becomes larger in your daily life, it takes from other aspects of our life and short changes them. Imbalance is never helpful and even mother nature tries to correct an imbalance.

The cutting you are doing and the thoughts of suicide are reactions you have to being overwhelmed with your emotions, all seems too big or too much to be able to handle right now, but it all seems to be demanding fixing right now. Try to understand, it can't all be taking care of at one time, nor in some cases does it need to be taken care of as it will fade out of its own at some short distance down the road of life. It is difficult to establish a priority list of things to take care of right now but that is a bit of what you are being faced with. The expectations of others right now will have to wait or be ignored and you have to listen to what you are saying to yourself. Have you done that, do you know what it is your head is actually telling yourself and have you been able to compare that to what your heart is telling you? If different, there is major conflict so perhaps it is time to listen to yourself instead of others and figure out what it is you really think and feel about something, not just parrot what someone else has to say.

You can stop the cutting as you don't have to feel overwhelmed by your emotions right now. Take each one at a time, not all together. Again, so might be important and some may not, but you have to decide what is important to you and what is not, without the reliance on parents or teachers, etc. Yes you can incorporate what they have to say into your process, but you need to stop trying to blindly follow it as it could actually be opposite of what you really feel. You need to discover what that is. So to stop the cutting when you feel overwhelmed, set up a stop system well before you go to far along that path and go do something else, play basketball, take a walk, to sit and talk with someone about the weather, whatever, but don't allow yourself to continue with the process that sets you up for the cutting.

Suicide, it is not abnormal to have thoughts of it now and again, especially when a teenager. But understand, all that you face right now when you think about it is not going to stay the same. All things pass, even bad times, even times when we think the whole world is gonna blow up and away, it doesn't. Nothing stays the same very much in life and when we are teens we have a tendency to see things clearly in black and white terms, but as we grow older we find most of everything is in shades of gray. But teens deal so much with absolutes, in reality and in the real world, there are few absolutes. So don't let what you feel today push you to do something with such finality, as what you feel so strongly about today is likely to change significantly tomorrow.

Overall, life doesn't really get harder, oh, for sure there are times when it is, but again it doesn't last forever, but mostly as we get older, it gets easier and less difficult. We become more experienced in living of life so there are less situations we find ourselves in that are fear producing as we have some inkling of how things will progress or happen or we develop a faith in our ability to handle a rough situation should it come about. Our confidence level with ourself is higher and we also do realize, nothing will last forever.

You are now entering a period of time in your life where self awareness is going to be most prominent for you and it is necessary for you to go through it. You are now aware of you being separate for all that is around you, and it is scary and it is frightening because you don't know what to do. Take you time getting to know you and give yourself a bit of patience, everyone your age is going through the same thing and just as frightened as you and though parents might be aware of it, have a tendency to forget what it was like when they went through it. So patience is most what is needed, then if possible find someone you can talk with and share with, but above all look at this as an opportunity to get to know yourself and as an adventure into the discovery of the rest of your life.

Good luck and you can PM me any time you want.

 

I feel the same way man =[