A letter from Sep 14, 2022

Dear FutureMe, I literally have not been able to stop crying these past 24 hours. It's just one mental breakdown after another, trying to hold in the tears. For a while I'd been set on civil engineering on my major. It feels so right for me. And it was reasonable too, I had done my research and asked around. But then when I told my mom I had been considering Civil Engineering, she immediately shut me down. Only males go into Civil, she said. You can't find a job, she said. You will never succeed. And Justin had tried to defend me, which I know he was doing it for the sake of me, but it didn't matter anyway. She said she was against it. If I go into engineering, it has to be electric engineering because I made it clear I wasn't going into CS or software. I cried in the shower, then I cried myself to sleep last night. My dreams are dead. These past years, any time I brought up a career I was interested in, she always told me it was a bad idea, only to change her mind a week later. Health field? Low pay, stressful, liability. Engineering? Finding internships and jobs are hard. Then suddenly she likes the idea of either. She refuses to accept anyone except the version of me she has in her head. She has never cared about what I wanted to do. She has never cared whether or not I even liked it. Today I was dead on the inside. I was tired and upset and just emotionally drained because I cried so much. I guess I'm applying for electric engineering. It's not like I can do anything else. I can already feel myself getting depressed in the future because I literally hate electricity so badly. Electromagnetics was the unit I failed because it was so hard. Not even that, I failed the circuits unit too. EE is considered one of the hardest engineering branches. It wasn't like I was 100% opposed to electric engineering it's just... I know I'm going to hate every single second of it. Even with jobs. If I don't want to deal with circuits, I'll have to do more software based jobs, which is the one thing I hate more than circuits. At least with Civil, I'd actually be interested. Also the fact that it's way more competitive so I'm almost certainly going to get rejected from at least 80% of my schools. I can basically kiss the UC dream goodbye. Which is okay, I know CSUs are great schools too but like. If I enter a CSU, then what was all of this for? I'm so upset. Like legitimately upset. I can feel myself about to cry just typing this. I've half accepted the fact that I'll never be able to anything I want. I think I need a bit more time to mourn my dreams. I wish I could just suck it up like I usually do but this one hurts so bad. By the time you read this, I hope you've moved on from these feelings. This grief. Because I'm not coping well. You're approaching the end of your senior year, so I'm sure you're already feeling even more emotional. I'm just. UGH.