I was one of the smartest kids in my school, breezed through school and the first year of college with no problems at all then was kicked out of one lesson for not turning up enough even though I had an A in that class. So I ended up dropping out of college then (english college, not american). I ended up working at maccy d's for a while and getting into drugs and gambling and wasted quite a few years of my life.
Eventually found a job at a hospital pathology laboratory, was not a skilled job, and was way below my abilities but it was better than nothing, abused that job at the same time as abusing drugs for 4 years, went through numerous depressive episodes during that job and was off sick for about 1/4 of the time there.
I left that job to go back to school, enrolled in a university degree that would take 4 years, and was doing well for the first half of the year then started to get distracted and bored. Then I met my ex, who I instantly fell for and I spent a lot of time with, she was living in a different city, I took my exams for uni, pretty much knew that I had failed them because I didn't put enough effort into them even though I should have easily passed that year.
I moved in with my ex and gave up the degree, moved to this city I am in now, was with her for around 2 years, we got engaged pretty quickly, we moved to a house on the outskirts of the city, and we were happy. Then I broke it off about 4 months ago because I was unsure if I would be happy in the future or if it would last. I desperately want to go travelling and I am not a huge fan of society and that is at odds with what my ex fiance wanted.
These last 4 months on my own have been hard, I have spent most of the time regretting the decision to leave my ex, although we both now agree it was the correct one. I have wasted a lot of these 4 months going down a path of self destruction but that has stopped now and I have turned a corner and am ready to start sorting my life out again. I have a job in a lab in this city and I have a place to live. I have a life here, not much of one.
It is where I am now at 25, not where I thought I would be at this age, when I left school at 16 so much was expected of me by my family because I was the
smart one. All I seem to have done is disappoint them and worry them constantly with my depression, anxiety, and most of all my drug abuse and gambling habits. Have cut out the gambling for now, and the drug abuse is only rare, and tapering off benzos which I have been on for over 7 years now, pretty low on my taper now, 12mg diaz a day.
I have realised though that I need to focus on me and finding out who I am and what I want from life rather than trying to fit in with the expectations of my family and of society in general. I am not a fan of society as many people know, I feel the need to get away from it, and am planning to go travelling in a couple of years to take a break from it, and then hopefully find some sort of life where I can be happy with myself, stop trying to please my familly and failing and stop trying to fit into something that I don't feel comfortablel in.
To answer the initial question Where are you now? I am pretty lost right now, still wonder whether I should have settled down with my ex and lived the happy life that we had going, I really really hope I haven't made a huge mistake by leaving her and trying to find myself on my own. I do feel I need to find myself properly though and it wouldn't have been fair to take her along for the ride and then realise that the me that I found didn't include her, although it may well have included her. Who knows.
Anyways, will stop rambling now and let other people post where they are now
