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Locust said:
Then, after its all done I'll be sitting there with no house, a crappy car, and no land because all of my money went in to those bills.

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But what do you have now? You can't get anywhere unless you start; you can't become a writer unless you write. It takes (I've heard) 10 years to become a writer, has a 10 year apprenticeship.

I'm reading Chapter After Chapter by Heather Sellers and trying to write my first book now. It's some of the hardest work I've done in at least 20 years (and I, like you, have been wanting to write for that long). Much harder than teaching myself to finish my homework in Accounting in 1989 (got a "B" in that first accounting class because I missed 1 too many classes and so wasn't there to turn in homework which counted a few points; I only got a B instead of an A by 9 points).

You have to get to know yourself by doing. You succeed at any one thing then build on that. Get your scuba certificate! From there you can work on the next thing. What else are you doing? The scuba certificate will also be a certificate that says you can try and succeed at something. It will be a tangible piece of evidence that you can get what you want.

When you are older and have a job, school is much different. Athletics and all that extra stuff doesn't have anything to do with it; there are a zillion ways to finance education or whatever you want:

http://www.umuc.edu/paymentoptions/

Why would you have to pay your past medical bills? What is happening to them now? Who else is going to pay them? I lived on my own, hand-to-mouth, until I was 35 and married. If I'd known then :-) what I know now, it wouldn't have been quite so difficult I don't think. I don't know that I would have changed my behaviors but I might have sought out and gotten more help.

The people "out there" are the ones that will be the most help. People you haven't met yet, haven't come in contact with but can only come in contact with them if you go "out there". I never understood the idiot line my stepmother use to give me about "men for you to date aren't going to come and beat down your door!" I knew that but I didn't understand it truly! You say you are working with an agency with nice people, etc. get to know some of them better. Somebody knows somebody that can help you. You can find mentors and people who know how to get things done in fields you might be interested in.

One of my favorite books of all time, that helped me enormously was Louis L'Amour, the Western writer's, autobiography, Education of a Wandering Man. He had no education, less than you have. I think you would enjoy his story and get some ideas from it.