I started uni 2014 and I’ve still yet to finish it because of life BS. Dealing with depression / ADHD has made finishing my degree seem impossible for me to do and I feel like an absolute failure everyday because of it. I wasted many semesters attempting clases and then dropping out when my grades weren’t good.
My parents both graduated by their early 20s and had me at 23; I’ll be 29 soon and I still live with them working at a Walmart to make ends meet and even with that I’m about to be fired for poor performance. I feel depressed being there because I was given everything in life to be successful and yet I wasted my 20s away being depressed / suicidal. All of my friends all have graduated long ago and have better jobs and I get envious seeing them being successful. All I think about is splattering my brains all over the wall.
I don’t have a plan to follow, every day I’m just hating myself for wasting my best years over stupid shit instead of focusing.
I also felt bad about it for a while. I’m a scientist by heart, 100 %, and I knew I had the intellect to get a degree. I thought the reason why I didn’t anyway was because I was also some kind of assclown.
Fortunately, my degree attempt coincided with a useful obsession, for a change: My old programming hobby. The obsession ended like all the others, but the knowledge that stuck from going 14 hours per day was enough to get food on the table for decades to come.
It’s just now that I realise I never was an assclown, and I never “decided” to quit my degree. It was ADHD, and I never stood a chance, not with “discipline” or just “deciding” alone. Knowing it, with treatment plus self-acquired methods & tricks, it would have been an option back then, and maybe I’ll go for it again, if time allows.
Pushing yourself is good, but it needs to be a “relative” push based on your ability. Could be 5 hours of hard studying / cleaning / whatever for some. For others, or the same person on a different day, getting one bag of garbage and filling it, or studying 25 minutes is already the best.
Your post is a good start to collect ideas for moving forward, at your own pace. It won’t be easy, but your situation is objectively not as bad as it feels to you. Maybe it can be a small step towards improving your condition?