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IntotheOcean
I've been earning a wage since I was 10. I used that money to pay for school supplies, clothes, and what ever entertainment I could afford. My mom left my father when I was 6 months old after she found him beating me. For the first few years after that, my childhood was fairly normal, but then my mother started using and things went down hill. After a childhood of my mom and her boy friends drinking, smoking and selling anything possible, police raids, looking for listening devices left by undercover cops, picking my mom up off the floor and checking to see if she was past out or overdosing, having her thrust a knife into my hand and begging me to kill her, and then finally leaving her boyfriend and leaving me with him when I was a teenager. I'm guessing my childhood was "worse" then yours. And I don't feel I'm exaggerating when I say my parents didn't give me anything.
Then again, I did learn a lot from my childhood and in that regard I don't regret it. It could have been better. But then I would've been a different person and it's impossible to say if that truly would have been better or not.
And I have ZERO doubt that there's someone on here that would envy my childhood over their own. My point is that there's always going to be someone worse off, better off, smarter, prettier, whatever. You gotta play the hand you were dealt, stop looking everyone at else's and leave the self pity at the door.
Also, university isn't the end all be all to a future.