first, you don't need to reward or payback your parent. You don't need to feel guilty for the love and support of your parent.
second, it is never too late. you already had a time machine. your future 70 year old self transported you back so that you had awareness and wrote this post but you can't remember that you're from the future. But you do know that you can make a difference starting now. Don't aim for big changes. You will mostly disappoint and give up. Aim for small daily improvements. Procratinate a little bit less (just a little will do) . Learn a bit more (just a bit more is enough) every day.Time will be your friend and you will be a different person a year from now.
I do owe my parents, firstly because I am adopted and secondly, they went above and beyond for me in every way they could. Thank you for the kind words, I appreciate them.
I am trying small daily improvements now, for the millionth time. But the fear and the guilt is overwhelming, and I am never gonna catch up to other normal people, much less high earners. And then there is AI.
Look, I'm sad to say I absolutely know the headspace you're wandering right now, and I don't have a panacea. I can tell you though, fuck the AI hype wave. Fact is, if it gets to the point where the 1% decide to fuck the other 95%, it ain't gonna end well for somebody, and we all know who not for the most. If you're gonna throw your lot in with anyone, save your soul, and give the finger to most of the types that consider themselves above everyone else. Solidarity is something bore by the humbled and humble, and is likely part of what drove your own parents to take the longshot on you. They still love you, and the best thing you can do for yourself is follow their example and learn to love you too.
You need to work on loving you, for you. Even though that may be extremely difficult right now, it is possible, but you have to look for the ways how. The first step in that, is to admit those ways might exist. If you spend enough time truly feeling self-loathing and internalizing it, what'll happen is your consciousness will shove it deep down into the unconscious, where it'll take on a life of it's own, and get stronger and stronger over time. C. G. Jung, a psychologist of the 20th century coined a term for this process, enantidromia, and it's kind of a consequence of being a human. Normally things even themselves out, but in certain cases, the repression of those parts of yourself can be so severe that it turns straight up pathological, and never gets a chance to even out in a less disruptive way. Given the conscious mind kinda floats on top of the unconscious faculties, orchestrating what you've mentally automated over the years, and what you can begin to experience is a very alarming tendency for these pathologically amplified loops to break into your conscious processing loop to great deleterious effect on your overall quality of life.
I've experimented with a couple therapeutic techniques that might help alleviate a few things/maybe help you find some direction.
Try looking up Dr. Tori Olds series on Coherence Therapy, AEDP, and Internal Family Systems.
Even if you can't afford a therapist to work with you, it should give you enough of a grounding in the technique that you should be able to equip at least a few parts of your psyche with the tools to start to knit itself back together. The essence of these techniques are severalfold:
A) You are many-parted, and each of those parts is a fragment of you that has played a part in getting you where you are today, and keeping you alive.
B) There are no bad parts. Just bad times to use parts that are insufficiently integrated.
C) You can integrate and heal these parts. It takes time, dedication, and an openness to experiencing/reliving the insecurities of your past, and bringing new, wiser insight to these parts of you. They're already there, but isolated from one another. The healing process though will open up entirely new avenues of life you never thought of once you break the fundamental pathological loops that have dominated your unconscious faculties.
I can't say it'll fully fix you. Still working through some dodginess myself. But I'd be remiss to let someone whose tread those parts of the human experience go without giving them a glimpse on what has at least helped me pull out of some of the worst days it.
Keep trying. The only way out is through, and by wrestling with the unconscious, you'll be amazed the changes that'll pop up. It may not be the ones you want, but at least it won't be the same self-destructive loops you dealt with the day before.
Comments that assert that genetic inheritance determines life outcomes are not what we want on HN. It has very ugly implications that I don't need to spell out. And it's personal for me because I, and others I know and love, have put a lot of work over many years into overcoming inner obstacles that were said by "experts" to be "hard-wired" traits.
We want HN to be a place for talking about expanding people's possibilities, not limiting them.
The point is that much of what is generally considered to be "hard wired" is not as immutable as we think. There are many different ways to improve our circumstances and options. I've explored several with good results, and seen others apply different ones with good results.
Given my role here is a moderator, It's not appropriate for me to be giving out health/life advice, and it's always the case that professional mental health treatment should be sought if there's risk of self-harm. But you're welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com if you think we may be able to help point you in the right direction.
Although, my bio parents and grandparents were white-collar or white collar adjacent at least. And one of my bio grandpa was very conscientious and active well into old age
