I am a high school teacher - I work with a lot of students that share your issues so I'll relay what I tell them when they're struggling. What I'm going to say might sound harsh but I'll have a bash at it and we'll see where it goes. How does that sound?

Excellent! So here we go! Let me start by saying I recognize all of the issues you face. None of them are easy and it is difficult to walk the path alone. A lot of my students come from homes in which there's no sympathy or support. But your biggest problem is one you can't quite solve just yet. You're just a kid! I am 50 years old so what I offer has some merit.......and believe me when I tell you, I have lived 250 lives in those 50 years! I'm bipolar, suffered from substance abuse for years before I became a teacher, and was generally self destructive in much of what I did in life. I passed out in my driveway, twice. I threw trash onto my roof. I destroyed my garage with a hockey stick. My friends treated me like a circus act. I was at rock bottom......but I survived. I made it.

Now, I find joy in all sorts of things - I climb mountains, I play a Strat (I suck), and I just exist. I'm just me, no more, no less.

You have dreams and aspirations as we all do. A sure path to living your dreams is going to school. A sure path to failure is to quit on school. And I think you'll agree with me on that one. I have no insight to your academic ability but I can tell by the way you write that you're not an idiot. Step 1 is finishing school. There is no denying it. There's no redeeming value in being a HS dropout making $10.00 an hour for eternity. None.

HS is easy apart from all of the nonsensical social challenges that someone like me didn't face in 1980. Let those challenges wash over you. Your job is to see it through. Or perhaps, more to your situation, get through it. There's a sense of pride we all gain when we do things that we don't necessarily want to do, yet we find success in making it happen. Do you think that I *want* to go to work, hanging around with 1,000 teenagers every day? With all due respect, I'd rather be fishing or climbing a mountain! A colleague of mine uses the following expression all the time. "We do what we need to do so we can do what we want to do". Sure, I enjoy teaching, but wouldn't we all rather be doing something else other than what we need to do? Right now, you need to finish school! You can make it happen.

Consider some other things that interest you. Back to my comment about you being a "kid".........you don't know quite yet what's out there for you. Don't try to solve it all today. Take it one step at a time and don't press. The change, the success, the growth, and the reward will all take time.

As people have prayed for me, I too shall pray for you. You can make this happen. And when it is done, you'll look in the mirror and say "I made it happen on my own".