TW: Depression, thought of self deletion.
Hi, this happened many years ago.
For context, I was studying law in my city. My mom pushed me very hard to go to law school and become a lawyer, like my father (whom she hates). I started when I was 17yo and at first it was going great. I was having high grades, getting along with classmates and even professors, and overall I was excited.
Then the 2nd year came in. I had way more things to study, my sleep schedule went to hell, I started to get stressed out, and my grades started to suffer. It started with something mediocre, but normal, then with all my stress, the other grades started to also fall.
With every bad grade, I was spiraling down and loosing my confidence. I started to get depressed, I was feeling shame because my professors and classmates had high expectations on me, and I felt like was failing them.
I was so depressed, to the point that I couldn't concentrate in class anymore. I was also falling asleep in class, and because of that my notebooks were an absolute unreadable mess.
I ended up failing 3 classes, with 2 I would have to repeat the year. So yeah, one of my worst fears became true, I had to repeat. But I couldn't accept it, I refused to tell my mom, with whom I was living and was still the same helicopter parent she was my whole life. She always demanded that I showed her my grades, since at first my grades were good there was no problem, but when I stopped showing her, she started to lose her mind. I didn't even tell her that I had lost the year, I was scared of how she would react. She ended up finding out, because she asked a friend of her that was a math teacher in the same university but in another career to tell her my grades, using his access to the university database. When she found out we had one of the worst fights we ever had that made me cry for hours.
I didn't want to go back to the university, I was too ashamed, but she signed me up to repeat the year, with only the 3 classes I failed.
When I started the year some of my classmates were seeing the same failed classes as me. They reassured me that "it just happens" it I had nothing to worry about, but I was just too ashamed of myself.
That year my depression got worse, I was at the point where I didn't know what the professors were saying because I was too busy in my mind thinking how much I wanted to die. "I could just jump from this window and end it, maybe I could just drink Bleach" were daily thoughts.
At some point I stopped trying to study, because I knew I would just fail.
At some point I found an online college that also had a law school. I though, "that would be a nice option to continue studying while dropping out of here, and is way cheaper". I told my mom about this and she went ballistic, she wouldn't let me go to an inferior online college and said that I was a failure, that I will always be a failure because I chose to be one, like my father.
Now, for the title. I was in desperate need of some escapism, and tried to find animes that were just chill and didn't require me to think too much. I found Lucky Star, a simple slice of life anime with tons of contemporary otaku references. I tried not to watch it in one go because it's a middle sized anime. For a while, it made me forget all my problems, just chill and relax, and sometimes laugh. I felt comforting and welcoming. It gave me a warm feeling that I was looking for.
It was like 11 PM one night and finally reached the last chapter of Lucky Star. I still wasn't ready to let it go, but I was expecting to see how it was going to end. Just when it ended, I was enjoying it so much, and then my mom came out of her room. At the time my room was right next to hers. She was enraged, because I was still awake late at night and I had college tomorrow, she said I was a failure and then went and unplugged the router and modem and told me to go to sleep.
I started crying, for a while this series had made me forget my problem, and then comes my mom and ruins it for me. I was watching it from a not so legal anime streaming page, and the only thing I could do was replay the last portion of the episode that was cached in my browser, and keep crying, this time I really didn't want to let it go. I was crying so hard over Lucky Star, and kept crying for at least 2 hours. I was too scared to just get out of my room to plug the modem and router again because my mom could be waiting to keep scolding me.
In the following days, I felt so pathetic, I was in such rock bottom that I was crying while watching Lucky Star.
That year didn't end well. At one time, instead of going to my final exams, I just went to watch Avengers Infinity War, for the second time on theaters. I failed the same 3 classes again.
This time I got a condition called RR, which mean you failed the same year twice, and are banned from the university for I think 3 years until they let you come back.
My mom still couldn't accept that I was going to drop out, and kept berating me for it. Until this day, everytime I have something cool or great in mind, she reminds me that I'm a drop out. Everytime she sees someone around my age succeeding in life, she reminds me that I'm a drop out. She wont let it go until I graduate from something, but I still can't recover, I can't be put in front of a test because I black out, can't concentrate, and perform badly. Everytime I enter a school, university or something like that, I get anxiety, I can't be in a classroom because I feel so much anxiety. I have no plans to get a degree on something.
Thanks for reading my pathetic story. This happened many years ago and I'm in a better place now. I still have my mom in my life but when I move out I plan to limit contact with her.