I'm 16 years old and am currently enrolled in summer school. This year I got 6 F's second semester and 2 F's first semester. Last year, I got a 4.2 GPA and was enrolled in honors English and an Advanced math class. People used to refer to me as the smart quiet kid. Okay. It all started late last year. The summer of 2009 was awful. I found out through text messages, emails, and pictures (eww) that my 59 year old dad was cheating on my mom with a 29 year old girl in college. I told my mom and she was really upset. She confronted my dad and he denied it but then admitted to it and just always changed the subject when it was brought up. My mom can't leave him because she would be helpless in the real world and doesn't have a job. Then, later that summer, my dad was caught tax evading (giving his assistant false W-2 forms for 10 years) and I found out we were poor. The IRS seized our house and we almost had to move but the owner let us rent from him. The whole summer I hadn't done anything because I couldn't drive yet and I had no friends to do anything with. At the end of that summer, I tried to forget everything and just try to do my best in school. I decided to take 3 honors/AP classes considering I had gotten straight A's in all of my classes the year before and had received academic excellence awards in three of my classes (one of which was AP). I was in the top 5% of my class. The school year started out great and I was breezing through classes. Then, it got a bit harder and I had to do a lot of work at home. I would often end up going to sleep at 2 am after doing homework. Then one day, I caught the flu and was out an entire week. I missed so much and when I got back, I was too afraid to ask my teachers for makeup work because I was so shy. I immediately fell behind after being sick and began to get B's and C's on test. I overreacted and began to lose motivation and didn't work as hard. I started to do horribly on tests and I felt miserable. I'm also very shy and had no friends to comfort me. I also got extremely nervous when around other kids. One day, I had this huge test and I barely studied for it. I panicked and I left school at breaktime. I walked home and just hid outside until school was over. I began panicking regularly and also skipping school regularly. My parents soon found out and I had to see the school psychiatrist and my counselor. This just made me feel worse and even more embarrassed. Soon, I ended up refusing to even attend school. The school end up hiring a private tutor for me to make up my work at my house. I had avoided social contact for so long that I refused to see the tutor. The school reacted and recommended that I should go to a health clinic place and get psychological treatment if I kept refusing to see the tutor. I felt alone and depressed. I finally began seeing the tutor out of fear of going to the Health clinic crazy house place. The school gave me a deadline to finish my work but I ended up missing it and therefore receiving incomplete/failures in many of my classes. My dad started getting mad at me because I was refusing to go to social events and family friends' parties. One time, he got so mad at me that he threw me against the stairs and hit me in the face. It hurt me more emotionally and psychologically than physically. The school year is over now and I've been taking these summer school classes to makeup my work. My GPA is ruined now and my chances of getting into the college I was aiming for (Stanford) have been lost. I've started to go out more and talk to people but I still don't have any real friends. My only friend is my sister but she is going to college in a month. I've started to play basketball because I want to get a basketball scholarship (I'm 16 and 6"4 and am pretty good but really skinny)since there is no way now that I can get into a decent school with my GPA. This academic year, I'll try not to overwhelm myself and focus more on learning the material rather than grades. I've also started to watch some pretty inspiring movies: Into the Wild, Up in the Air, Lost in Translation, An Education, A Serious Man, Milk, Invictus, The Cove... I've also started to study business books and have even been buying and selling fake stocks through this virtual real world program. I started with $10,000 to spend on stocks and have already turned that into $30,000 worth of fake stock shares. I didn't have any nice things until I saved up to get an Evo (loving it). However, my sister is leaving in a month and I'll be stuck with my parents. My dad is still cheating on my mom (now with multiple women) and my mom still acts like a 5 year old but I still love her (my dad on the other hand is an asshole). I'll probably end up going to a community college which I've learned to accept. Community college is a lot cheaper anyways and I probably wouldn't have been able to afford a university anyway. I might even be able to transfer to a university if I do well in community college. I'll have to get student loans though. Sorry I wrote so much. If you managed to get to this point, answer me this: Were your teen years ever this bad?