Yentemonkey
Trying to heal through blaming the menahel is not going to work. You need to figure out how you’re going to let this affect your life. You’re acting out your anger and sending a message (“oh, yeah? You thought I was bad then?”) by hanging out with the wrong crowd now. The people you would’ve liked to have listened to your outcry have stopped listening. If you feel others let you down, you need to, at the very least, be a friend to yourself. I failed first period two semesters straight in ninth grade because I could never get to school on time. I was 13 and traveling on my own for the first time in my life. I was a latchkey kid, and no one noticed. I had horrible grades, and nearly failed out if high school. It was only later, when I went to seminary and college that I began to care. Going through a rough period is just that; a period. How would you like to see yourself? Forget about what everybody else wants for you and from you. If what you want contradicts what others say is good for you, then find an authority figure (and I know that will be hard after such a major one in your life let you down) and speak. Ask all those questions, discuss all your doubts, talk about your needs and how you don’t know how to make it work with Yiddishkeit. There are people who love to talk to teens who are struggling and to help them. You have to decide what you want to make of this. Look at the kids from the ghetto who have so much anger and never take responsibility to try to make their lives better. My dad has a companion who grew up this way, fighting and angry. He decided he wanted more for himself and is now putting himself through school. He could have crumbled and been a thug and justified it by saying that’s what life threw at him. Instead, he chose to focus on how he can rise above the difficulties.