I'm only posting this in information war because I don't know where else to post. If this violates some sort of rule I don't know about, my apologies.
The other day I was visiting a friend who has two now teenage kids and they are just extraordinary. They are involved in all sorts of activities, get good grades, are athletes, and they have a ton of friends and for the most part stay out of trouble.
I had a similar upbringing but a big part of this was the fact that my parents were very involved in almost everything that I did. Like most teens I probably thought they were invading my privacy or something at the time and resented them for it. As it turns out they were correct about their guidance and it took me getting to adulthood to realize that. I remind them about this and how grateful I am on a regular basis and this is easy because they live very nearby.
Not long ago I got the unfortunate news that a friend of mine, who I spoke to frequently and was in the same classes as him, offed himself by hanging in September of 2026. It's really tragic but then again, I lost touch with him a long time ago.
Reflecting back on my interactions with him back in the day I was quite envious of the freedom that he had to do whatever he wanted without "getting in trouble" but now, I can see that this lack of oversight lead to a lot of problems in his life.
This is a stock image but it is a good representation of what my friend Brian looked like in class on a regular basis. He seemed to need to go to school but there was nothing that was going to force him to perform there. He had zero fear of what the aftermath was going to be with a bad report card because his parents likely never saw it. Speaking of which, I never met Brian's parents and we never went to his house. He would frequently stay at my house after stating something horrible like "oh my parents lock the door after 8 so I can't go home now."
I think my own parents were able to read between the lines because they always offered to let Brian stay with us. Later on I would find out that he often stayed with other friends of mine as well.
After I graduated and went off to college, Brian (somehow magically) also graduated and well, we lost touch with one another. I saw him once or twice when I would visit my parents but he was kind of up to no good. He was like Matthew McConaughey's character where even though he graduated from high-school he continued to hang out with high-schoolers because they appreciated him... probably for all the wrong reasons.
He would later move across the country to I think it was Utah to work at a ski resort in some capacity, and I found him on Facebook and spoke to him a time or two. He was always drunk and when I did invade his comments he was always trolling someone somewhere.
His job was nothing special and was definitely not something you would imagine a person his age should have. Like a dishwasher or something not so glamorous and would be offered to anyone.
When we spoke in our chats, we both kind of went back in time and I did a little trick on him and mentioned how my parents were doing because he got to know them quite well when we were both in the same high school grade. I noticed that he never mentioned his own parents in return though.
I really don't think they ever had anything to do with him outside of what they were legally obligated to do without going go jail.
Brian never ended up doing anything with his life that gave him much pleasure other than getting "Fucked up" and while I think that stayed fun for him for a while, after a couple decades of doing that and looking around and realizing that his youth was behind him and he amounted to nothing must have caught up with him. He committed suicide in a rather private way as to not burden anyone else with cleaning up, inside of his small and simple apartment.
When I look at this situation, I can definitely attribute the start of his downfall to not having any sort of guidance in his life. His parents appeared to not want to have anything to do with him and therefore there was no encouragement to ever do anything other than the silly things that teenagers think is important, but in actuality has no sort of long-term benefit to anyone.
I am not a parent. I don't want to be one. But I think I would have to work pretty hard to become as completely uninvolved in the life of a child in my life as Brian's parents were. I don't think any one of Brian's friend ever met his parents and back in the 90's that was rare in my circles.
So if you are a parent, I am sure you already realize how critically important you are in the life of your child/children. They might not like the guidance and in my case sometimes, the punishment that you dole out, but I really believe that my life turned out pretty fantastic largely because my parents were very involved in my life.
It's just too bad for Brian though. He was rather smart, funny, and kind for someone that was never lead towards doing anything of worth. It's a shame he is gone and I seriously hope that his parents feel a great deal of shame. They completely failed him.
