[palimpsest]

Thank you all for your great advice. The one main thing I can think of that was holding me back was my really poor coping techniques. My whole middle school experience was hell as mentioned, my (single parent) mother is very inconsistent in her support, and I fell into a depression. I'd stopped bathing, spent the whole afternoon sort-of sleeping and zoned out through most of my classes... my mom thought I was lazy or lacking vitamins. Eventually she moved me to a school I recovered in, but following that came a financial fall-out that got me a year-long hiatus with my angry and disappointed family who kind of spread their anger around.

My mom doesn't count me as an adult until I've graduated college (because you actually need a college diploma to get any job at all here,) and I personally don't feel like an adult at all, wondering why everyone around me seems to expect my knowledge of commute routes and banking protocols to spontaneously pop up. I mean, I know I should take some responsibility but I've never had the slightest clue how or even how to figure out how.

I used to want to work with animals and the environment, but it just isn't that fulfilling anymore. I became a bit of an astrophysics autodidact, but this is entirely the wrong continent for it. I've turned to occultism at first to overcompensate for my powerlessness and insignificance, and even though I didn't directly find what I needed there it's adequately systemic to keep my interest and the most exciting hobby I have now but I know I can't really build a solid career on it.

I did reasonably well academically at my last school, but the social environment... not as bad as middle school, but still unbearable... and I took up homeschooling because I would be able to pace myself. Only, I'm still under the homeschooling curriculum and it turns out they have five pages of cursive writing as part of their sophomore high school syllabus, to give you an idea of their standards of "challenge" ... and whenever I sit myself down to it I just can't focus at all.