I have lived a pretty sheltered childhood despite having had gang members help take care of me as a baby and young child. but that's irrelevant. Basically, I've had nothing to pride myself on my entire life. I can't do anything athletic. I have no social skills. Singing, acting, music and any creative arts are totally beyond me. Any sewing or cooking I do ends up a disaster. Basically, I am worthless. However, I CAN read. And I do so a lot. I pretty much taught myself how to REALLY read, and immediately ditched the kids books for medical books, astronomy books, fiction, poetry and dinosaurs. I mean, obviously I DID stay with "Animorphs" and Dr. Seuss until I ran out of the former, since I WAS a kid. Basically, what I'm saying is, my lack of anything else to do/friends resulted in a book addiction. Naturally, I learned a LOT reading, and by the time I was in kindergarten, I knew enough to get by the next 4 years without learning anything new, other than a tad Chinese I have forgotten completely and some social skills. And I didn't need much help from 4th until 8th (expect with social skills and occasionally math). Then I went to high school. The social pressure made me snap to the point of wanting to kill myself, and I had to drop out at the end of freshman year. At homeschool, I had no problems until junior year. Now, without the social pressure to blame, it's easy to see the problem: I am no longer the smartest kid in the class. I'm hardly keeping up with everyone else. I'm barely passing my classes, I WON'T be able to go to college, and the ONE thing I liked about myself is GONE. My step-dad called me a loser nerd when I was at the top of the class. Now he just calls me a stupid loser. According to him, I will "fall down and start twitching if my boss ever looks at me", so I can't get a job. This is a reference to my tendencies to have panic attacks when stressed. I'm having a minor one now! I have NO right to get so fucking upset about all this, but I AM. I'm afriad I'll fail college and be in debt for the rest of my life. I'm afraid of being jobless and homeless. And I'm fucking TERRIFIED of the step dad saying "I told you she was going to fail." And I'm sick of feeling sorry for myself and whining about my stupid problems all the time! Maybe if I wasn't such a baby this wouldn't be a problem!
Why don't you have the right to be upset? It seems to me that you've let other ppl tell you what you are instead of looking into your heart to see what you can be. Its only up to you to succeed. You can't do it for anyone but yourself. You've already seen the problem now it's time to work towards a goal that YOU set up. Stop listening to your stepfather, he sounds like a jerk that has his own fears of failure.
Getting poor grades in high school has very little impact in your ability to go to college. My foster-sister barely graduated, worked for a year, spent a year at college upgrading her high school, and is now registered in the highly competitive environmental technology program. Her mother spent her whole childhood telling her that she couldn't do math, and here she is doing it anyways. It's hard, sometimes she thinks she can't do it, but she's made it this far. Try to keep your step-father's opinion of what you can do become what you can do- if he though you were straight, would that make you straight? When all is said and done, high school means very little. I locked myself in a bathroom stall and skipped more class than I care to think about, never thought I'd go back to school, and am now in college taking creative writing (I also lived out of books). I have a reading suggestion: Sean Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens. It's funny, engaging, and makes you think. It has a lot about changing your habits to match where you want to be. It was required reading for me in grade 11, and my parents bought me a copy because I liked it so much. It ends with my favourite quote: "You can't make footprints in the sands of time by sitting on your butt; and who wants to make buttprints in the sands of time?" -Bob Moawad
Life is really not about keeping up with everybody else or about other's opinions in general. What I'm saying is you need to have a big dream and pursue it. Don't let other people definition of success and failure rule your life: it's their damn problem! Play the game you wanna play. And I've been pretty obsessed with success - I have the academics to prove it - and with the experience, I think success comes more from relationships and loving what you do, or having a big dream than school stuff - I learnt that the hard way. Also, be gentle with yourself, you're worth a million bucks - even 10 - and you have every right to be upset.
