Dear Mina:

You wrote: “My parents and my teacher have always wanted me to be ‘someone’ and to truly live my life”- my input: you were already someone. When they send you the message that they want you to be someone in the future, they implied that you were not someone. What they implied was incorrect.

When they want you to “truly live your life” in the future, they implied that you were not truly living your life, and you may very well have been truly living your life. At least at the beginning of life, children do, truly live their lives, and so have you! Once again, they were incorrect.

You wrote: “I just wanted to be happy, doing things that I want to do”- my input: you have NOT been doing what you want to do for way too long. Way, way too long.

You wrote: “You do not need a high degree or going to an Ivy school to be rich. You can just marry someone for that”- my question for you: is being rich something you want or is it something your parents want? Sure, everyone prefers to be rich, but I wonder if marrying someone rich, in your mind, would be about  pleasing your parents, as if to say: I am not being the rich career woman you want me to be, but I married a rich man, so are you pleased? Do you approve of me..?

Regarding your second post: wealth does not make people happy/ content. It is what happens in between one’s ears, that determines contentment or lack of. There are plenty of examples of people who were successful in their careers and very wealthy who preferred to not be alive at all. There are plenty who are on antidepressants and so on.

Here is a summary of my input, which you requested: I think you are in a crisis of questioning your life, the values of your parents that you have been trying to accommodate, figuring out what you want, how you want to live your life. It may be being a wife, mother and housewife. There is nothing wrong at all with this objective. Thing is, you are not in a mental position to make this decision now. The reason I state you are not in the position to make this decision is that you wrote that you want to do so “as early as possible”- the rushing in it is suspect to me, at nineteen.

It may very well be time for you to quit your studies, go back home. Clearly this has to stop: your life being about accommodating your parents’ wishes.

Problem is “back home” doesn’t read to me like a comfortable place to be in because your parents do not support you living your own life, being a “someone” capable of determining how to .. truly live your life, that is, being true to yourself. Am I correct?

anita