AIBU to be bitter about something that happened nearly 20 years ago when I was a child?

[StardustHunter]

In the spring of 1997, when I was 7 years old, I attended an entrance exam for a very prestigious private school. It was arranged by my mum. At the time, I was attending a poorly performing state primary school. Despite the passage of time, I vividly remember the details of that day. I remember marveling at the opulence of the private school and its surroundings. Compared to my school, which was a crumbling, decaying dump, the difference was like night and day. It almost resembled stepping into a parallel universe. I remember the playing fields with their immaculately cut grass, the smartness of the uniforms, and the palpable sense of prestige as I entered the school building. Though I was very young, it felt like a vitally important moment in my life. Despite being from one of the poorer areas of the UK (I actually feel ashamed telling people where I'm from), and being from a polar opposite background to most of the other kids who were there, I remember thinking to myself that this was where I belonged. I was awestruck by how well behaved the other kids were and how polite everyone was. My school was a chaotic madhouse of disorder and indiscipline by comparison. I remember sailing through the entrance exam and being one of the first in the classroom to complete it. As I left and returned home with my parents, I was hopeful and confident that I would be accepted, and genuinely believed I would be returning there a few months later. That didn't happen. Those few hours I spent at that school, on that day, are the closest I have ever felt to being where I wanted to be in life. I have never came close to experiencing that feeling ever since.

This remains a cause of friction between me and my mum. After I repeatedly pressed her on why I didn't get accepted to that private school, she finally revealed that it was because she couldn't afford it. I am uncertain as to what the fees were at the time, but I believe they were several thousand pounds per year. Yet still she sent me to do the exam, knowing that she wouldn't be able to pay. To this day, I do not know why she made me do it anyway. To be honest, I'm surprised the school even allowed me to. They could probably have deduced by looking at my home address that I was probably from a poor family and my parents were unlikely to have the wealth needed to sustain a private education for me. Yet off she sent me, dangling the carrot and giving me false hope. I had my chance, did everything I was supposed to do to grab it, but it then transpired that I had no chance whatsoever from the start. Here I am now, 18 years later, languishing on the scrapheap with no job, money or prospects, waiting for the end to come. I was sadly not able to overcome the constraints imposed on me by the upbringing I had - being from a poor area, having a poor family, going to an appallingly bad school and having uneducated, unintelligent parents. I feel that getting into that private school was my only plausible route to success. Also, I have two extended family members who went to private school as kids. They used to look down on me because they were all in private schools and I wasn't. I went NC with them a long time ago for that and other reasons. They're thriving now as adults, which further foments my bitterness about the whole situation. I've been wanting to get this off my chest for a while.

Stardust - I agree with all those who have said your mum probably hoped you would get a scholarship that would enable her to afford to send you to that school. That you didn't is sad, but should not be the single factor that destroys your entire life.

You are 25 - I am 51 this year, so I can tell you this - your life is not over (barring terminal illness - but I am suspecting you are suffering from a surfeit of drama, rather than anything physical).

You have a choice - you can decide to change your life now. You can still get a good education - there are libraries full of books out there, and further education courses, and the Open University. You can't change the past - but you can change the future - but first you will have to let go of the bitterness and the sense that those few hours are going to shape your entire life.

Not RTFT.

Did you actually pass the exam?

Christ, what a load of pass-the-blame guff OP.

Fair enough you didn't manage to make a success of yourself, not everyone does no matter what school they went to.

But you need to own it and take a look around you. Not every successful person went to a private school.

I imagine she was hoping and praying desperately that you would get a 100% scholarship and she could give you the chances she thought you deserved and could never do by herself. She was probably devastated and may well have been feeling shame ever since for giving you a glimpse of something she could not follow through on.

Have you ever thought about what you would do in her shoes? Would you send a bright kid to take the exam to give them a shot of getting an education you could only dream of providing? How upset would you feel afterwards if this didn't happen? How devastated and ashamed would you feel about giving them a glimpse at a future you couldn't follow through on? How much worse would this be if said child began to keep asking you about it, reminding you of your failure?

You are still young. Go and get some councelling or help of some kind. Speak to your GP. You may well have depression and are trying to pin it all onto this one event. You need to find a way to move past this bitterness or you will never achieve anything. Once you have laid this ghost to rest ask yourself what you want to do then see if you can get there.

Look for jobs that offer training; apprenticeships and the like. They aren't all paid peanuts. I know a few people earning a proper wage whilst doing apprenticeships.

Investigate education options. I have no idea what your exam results are but most councils offer free adult learning to enable you to get GCSEs in English and Maths. This is a good springboard to get further. If you have reasonable GCSES look at the next steps up.

Places like The Princes Trust can help people of your age start businesses, offering grants, loans and mentoring.

Even in a job in a shop there are ways to advance and progress if you work hard and prove yourself. Only you are holding you back.

There are so many options open to you if you let go of the past and start looking at the future.

Good luck.

Ah yes, Zeebrugge! I knew it reminded me of something...

You're only 25, OP. Your whole life is ahead of you. My brother didn't go to University until his late thirties and he's now a Lecturer. You may not have thrived in the private school anyway. Plenty of people went to bog standard comps and are very successful. You need to take responsibility for your own life and success now.

I come from a one parent family. Grew up in a poor area. Went to not great schools (when league tables first came in my secondary was second from bottom nationally - which to be honest is a bit unfair it wasn't that bad).

But I worked hard at school, stayed alive. At 14 I was living with a Mum on benefits and a Grandmother with Dementia, my mother had a serious back problem so I cooked most meals. Later she went into hospital for a bit and I had to stay with my Aunt, for a while.
About the time of my o'levels my Grandmother suffered a series of massive strokes, was in hospital for a while and died.

However: I still got my O'levels, stayed on and got my A'levels and went to University.

A friend of mine during her A'levels was chucked out by her Mum, so went to live with her Dad and his OW, they then chucked her out and she spent some time living in a squat. She still got her A'levels and went to University.

You cannot blame everything on not getting into one school in the past.

I suggest you see a GP about your probably depression.
Look at your local college and see if you can do an access course or something. Do some voluntary work if you can't get paid work.

Make something of your life - you are very young still.

I don't understand why someone would post such a question.
I remember zee brute, another nonsensical question.

Op seems to post similar themes. Loss of parents, inadequate parents.

Pretty shit if it isn't true. I lost my parents at a young age in tragic circumstances with disastrous consequences for one sibling in particular. The family as a whole and individually live daily with the consequences.

Op if this true, heed the advice.

If it isn't, may you rot in hell for all eternity.

I never went to private school, and by my own admission I'm doing okay. It's not only privately educated folk that do well.
You have to push yourself.

I went to a failing secondary school. So bad that it's since been closed down, discipline was practically none existent, head teacher was usless, school building itself was falling down etc. Although we had the worst GCSE results in the county several people who were in my year have gone on to very well for themselves, a couple of them went to Oxbridge one is an engineer and another has a job in the fashion industry and travels all over the world.

I think your post is full of self pitying, snobby drivel OP.

Where did your self-perceived intelligence come from if your parents were so "unintelligent". Your mindset is negative and destructive. You are also an appallingly inverted snob.

That's assuming you're real and not some badly assembled construct. The overwrought writing style would suggest the latter.

Well I hear what everyone is saying but I can kind of relate to what the OP says.

I vividly recall trotting off to play netball at the age of 10 against our local posh private school and being entranced by its beautiful buildings and gardens, the lush sports fields, the fancy uniforms, the sense of order and calm. It was probably the first time it really dawned on me that society is unfair and that I was on the wrong end of the seesaw.

OP you sound depressed or at least as if you have the kind of mindset that could lead to depression. For one thing you are thinking in absolute terms - if only this one thing had been different your whole life would be different. For another you're catastrophising - waiting for the end, seeing the glass as empty and inadequate half full. I think you do need to talk to your GP and see if you can get some therapy of some sort.

I remember sailing through the entrance exam and being one of the first in the classroom to complete it.

I agree with PP. Your perception of this as a 7 year old is skewed and I'm afraid there's no evidence from this that you aced it. If you finished early, you may well have messed up. If it's a 1 hour exam or a 3 hour exam, that time is set for a reason and you need to use all of it.

I doubt your parents are us unappreciative of education as you think, otherwise you'd never have been sent to the exam. My parents were by no means well off. I went to the local bog-standard state schools. The secondary I went to was threatened with closure not long before I went there and was rough as fuck. I worked hard and got good GCSEs and A levels. I was lucky that there was some funding for university and I got to uni. I studied very hard and got a first. I then worked extremely hard to get funding for postgraduate work. I now have three degrees.

Children at private schools may well have a better appreciation of education on the whole but make no mistake - they are as capable of bullying as any child in a state school. Your life at that school as a scholarship kid may well have been awful. Stop dressing it up as a golden opportunity that your mother messed up.

Get some help. 25 is very young - you could have an amazing life in front of you. Don't assume you have an amazing future behind you.

OP, I imagine your mum put you in for the exam in the hope you'd get a scholarship. I'm guessing you didn't, so they couldn't afford to send you. At the end of the day, only 7% attend private schools so you're no worse off than 93% of the population in that respect.

I think the OP spunds alot younger than mid-late 20s.

You're wrapped up in bitterness and youve grown up all twisted and warped. Only you can get yourself back on track and make somethjng of your life. Alternatively you can carry on on the path you've startsd down and become a bitter, stunted human being, so determined that you've been cheated of the life you 'deserve' you use it as a self fulfilling prophesy to make sure you never do anything worthwhile.

You need to stop this path you're on. Only you can do that. If you need help to move on then get some. And if you don't want to, then don't.

What we hear in your self indulgent post is someone who's decided to ruin his/ her own life to spite the world and punish the parents. We've all met that type of person before, really not attractive and tend to bring everyone down around them, destroying hope and happiness wherever they can, taking a kind of vicarious joy in making the world as bleak and cheerless as possible, always someone to blame, someone to whine at, someone to hate. It's a poisonous way to live. And if you really do have the potential you claim to have, stop this path you're on. Change your life and the way you're heading. Won't be easy and won't be over night. But it's better to live life trying to be the best you can be, than living a life of cowardice and self deceit.

At 25 you can change your life right now. I agree with all the other pp who say that your mother was hoping for a scholarship. If you work hard now, study and make up for lost time, you can achieve whatever it us you would have wanted to. What career would you have chosen had you gone to private school? Why did you not study at school if you were so inclined?
I am in my mid thirties and missed out on a c grade at maths by 2 marks. It held me back so much once I past a certain level at work so that last academic year I went back to college to resit. I now have my maths GCSE. Given that you're probably going to be working into your sixties and possibly early seventies, get started making career choices and get some qualifications. No one owns your life but you. No one lives your life. Therefore it makes sense to invest in your life.

Passed not past - that's what you get for deleting half a sentence!

YANBU. You sound like you may be depressed. I was raised on a horrible council estate with bad parents and have similar feelings about my background. It sounds like your feelings held you back, rather than propelling you forward.

Believe me, it is not too late. My mother studied for her degree as a 41 year old single mother of three. If you are British then the funding for a first degree is still available to you and will be even if you live to be 116.

How could you possibly know that you sailed through the exam if you were only 7? Perhaps you failed it and your mother doesn't have the heart to tell you.

I haven't read the whole thread but enough to see that most people are going to say something along the lines of what I am going to. What you do now is you decide what you would like to do with your life in an ideal world. Assuming that requires academics, you get yourself on some sort of Access course (if that is what they are still called - people I know did these 10/15 years ago) which will give you the equivalent to GCSEs and A levels and allow you to go on to tertiary education, whether at University or elsewhere.

At the same time, you stop blaming your Mum and your old school for what has gone wrong with your life, and you make the rest of your life what you want it to be and what your Mum no doubt wanted to give you all those years ago.

Not 100% sure why we're all posting on this thread (yes, I get the irony). I highly doubt the OP will be back, reckon it's a light the blue touch paper and retire type thing.

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I think its pretty obvious you were sent to sit the exam to get a scholarship, and didn't do well enough to be offered one. It sounds like your mother was too kind to tell you. You would think that in the 18 yeas since then, you could have worked that out for yourself.

Universities are full of people from poorer backgrounds and non-public schools, in fact statistics indicate that once in university, non-public school educated students do better than those who are.

Its a strange thing to be bitter about for so long. Your comments about your parents are really quite horrible, and if you did have any talent and drive, you would have forgotten about it long ago and done something with your life.

having uneducated, unintelligent parents Wow. They were clearly forward thinking enough to arrange an entrance exam for you!

It sounds as if you are suffering from some kind of MH issue, but I don't think hiding the truth is necessarily helpful.

God this is the type of shit that people self publish on the Kindle.