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[quote=Anonymous]I completely get where you are, OP. I was there too, once.

You feel you will be WORTHLESS if you don't get your Ivy degree, if you aren't intense and hard-working and gain the outward trappings of success for the rest of your life.

But you are WRONG. Your depression is distorting reality. Your depressed mind believes that if you can't hack Columbia, you can't hack life.

That's totally absurd, twisted thinking.

DO NOT listen to the crazy "Asian woman" poster troll who's gunning for you to kill yourself. "She's" probably a teenaged male troll who gets points for being as destructive as possible online. Every word "she" wrote is a LIE.

I know several successful Asian women who have not gone to Ivy League colleges, who have not won awards and made huge amounts of money. They are employed in responsible (but not crazy intense) jobs, and balance kids and career as most of us do. They have happy lives, and you can too, once you remove yourself from the yoke you've placed on your shoulders defining "success" in such an extremely limited way (i.e. Ivy degree, high-pay, high-stress career, etc.).

When you're young, you don't have the perspective to see that life goes in waves. Right now you're at the bottom of the curve, but it will go up and down over time. Eventually, you get used to riding the waves, and expect ups and downs and aren't expecting to always stay at the top, because that NEVER happens, ever, even to the most superficially successful people. Never. I've seen this many, many times.

For example, one woman I know just went through the most messy, horrible divorce imaginable. She's very pretty, very smart, very successful in her financial career, as is her now-ex-husband. She's also an alcoholic who lost custody of her children during the divorce, which involved a trial in which her children testified against her. She had two beautiful (spectacular) homes, which she also lost in the divorce.

She's still pretty, very smart, and lives in a lovely, spacious, expensive apartment, but her life is a MESS. You'd never know it if you met her casually. She doesn't give the slightest impression of what's been going on. She had to quit her job because of her drinking, and now lives on her savings and the settlement from her divorce.

If this is the standard you aspire to, OP, you must be able to see that you are worshiping a false god. Those people who seem to glide through life with win after win come down to earth eventually, and their crashes can be spectacular.

The person I described above is now very, very depressed, and likely has been depressed for years, self-medicating with so much alcohol that she eventually became addicted and that addiction spiraled out of control.

I know your parents love you and want the best for you. It's difficult to accept that people who love you also hurt you deeply, but we don't choose our parents. If they are immigrants, they've probably sacrificed a lot for you, and they believe they know what's best for you. But they are wrong too.

Separating yourself from their terrible influence on you is very difficult, very emotionally wrenching, but you MUST do it.

Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Life will get better for you, OP, if you just let go of your parents' and the influence of people who expect you to conform to certain ways of living because you're a smart Asian woman.

Discard all that nonsense. One of my Asian friends got a PhD in art history from an Ivy, but after she met her very nice, down-to-earth husband in grad school, she realized that she got the PhD only to fulfill her parents' ambitions for her. She had no real interest in teaching or working in a museum, so she got a social work degree from a state school. She's now a very happy mom who works part-time as a social worker in a public school. Her husband is a college professor (not a lot of $$), but they have everything they need to live a successful, comfortable life.

Relationships are everything, OP. If you don't have love in your life, you will never be happy, no matter how much material wealth or how many fancy degrees or professional accolades you acquire.

Walk away from all the toxic people in your life directing you to their version of "success" that you don't believe in. You may have the smarts to win a Rhodes, but why reach for something you neither need nor want?

I finally became able to live and enjoy my life when I let go of my toxic family and followed my gut feelings about doing what I wanted and being with the people who made me feel good about myself. I did that in my early 20s, and have never looked back.

Life is precious, OP. You only get one, and you must take care of it. There is so much beauty in the world that you'll find once you let go of expectations that others place on you. You're the master of your life, only you. Life seems hopeless now, but that's only a feeling, and feelings aren't facts. The fact is (and I know this) that you will feel better, and your life will improve and you will feel happy in the future, even though you don't or can't see it now. It will come.

Keep moving forward, OP, one small step at a time, and ignore the "peace" you feel planning your own death. That's the evil voices of others speaking to you, not your voice. You're here to live, OP, and you have a great life ahead of you, full of ups and downs, but still a spectacular gift, too precious to waste. 
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