How much family support financially and emotionally is acceptable before it pollutes your personality?

Currently I am faced with multiple blockades in my journey towards becoming an adult.

I think the best place to start with describing my debate is at the very beginning laying it out as it happened and what led me to the current viewpoints I have today, but I would first like to preface this post by saying that I am autistic, which for me most often means that I take what people say to me very literally even when they likely don't mean it as such. Not only that but I also obsess over things that have had a negative impact of some sort on me. This could be part of being on the spectrum or it could be a form of PTSD but regardless of what it is, I often latch onto things that were said to me, things that were said indirectly that I thought applied or could apply to me, presentations, documentaries, anything really is up for grabs as long as it has a negative slant... you might say I am a sponge for negativity, and I while I have gotten less absorbent over the years, it's a problem that I understand will take some time to heal from. On a more positive note however I also have a pristine near photographic memory - mainly for scholarly visual and hands on material such as (again) presentations, documentaries, and also field trips. In elementary school for instance I remember when a beekeeper came to our elementary school wearing bee earrings bringing a hive with a viewing window (the queen bee was marked!), when a band of keyboard players from another school came and piled their keyboards so high it obscured a drummer who also came with them, how a student remarked that the pictures a lecturer showed us at a planetarium when I was in kindergarten were the same ones we had in our classroom, when a representative from my local water district gave a presentation with a model of a neighbor to demonstrate how  storm drains work and how trash impacts our ecosystem as a result along with a game for us to play where we pointed out in a picture people who were wasting water, finally there was also a bicycle safety group who came and gave a lecture on things such as bike lanes with cartoon drawings on a presentation sheet before showing us an obscure safety VHS made in the 80s in my hometown. These are the main things I can remember but there's also things from my home life too - my earliest memory for instance is of my mom and I watching two bobcats playing on a ridge in our countryside property from when I was around four, and I can also remember the first advent calendar I did for Christmas when I was around five or so which consisted of a story regarding animals bringing stuff for a festive Christmas scene - the first one was an elephant who brought a “great tree from far away” and there were also deer who “carried firewood in their antlers” and bunnies who shared “love warmth and cheer”.

If I did not notice these caricatures as a kid I think high school is where they really got to be problematic. I had been home-schooled for most of my life in a family that loved and still loves me dearly, spending most of my time at independent study groups where the kids were relatively well behaved and high school was my first real introduction to just how rough some kids have it and my first rude awakening to just how mean these same kids can be…to burrow some phrasing from the summary of R.J. Palacio’s Wonder I transferred from the independent study group I had attended that was pretty disorganized with teachers often arriving late to an “alternative” charter school for kids whose needs were not met by a traditional high school, and while the teachers were never late and the environment was far less cramped it was still a public school and while it probably was way better than most public schools I still remember a lot of the time I felt like an outcast socially with my loving family amongst the many kids who lived in the poor part of town along with kids who weren't afraid to crack offensive jokes, make threats against you, or simply cast evil glares if you snitched on them for stealing something valuable. Often in high school I would behave more like a jerk as I saw the other kids doing in hopes maybe I would fit in a little better... previously a friend of mine (and his mom) in elementary school cut my family out of their circle because he deemed I wasn't cool enough and I think I may have been afraid of that happening again.

The worst thing I experienced in high school did not however come from any of the students however, instead it came from the staff members. 

One day during my second semester around Christmas time, all the students were called early to meet in the room where on a typical school day we attempted to get all our homework done with the help of the teachers and various other staff. When we were all gathered together the teachers began marching us up to the cafeteria on the community college by which the charter school leased (and still leases!) their space. No one told us anything as to what was going on, insisting that it be kept a surprise... but I really wish they had and I bet they wish they had too now that the aftermath has had time to settle in.

The program they took us to had to do with budgeting. I'm hesitant to put the name of it in this post, as I am perhaps the only person on this entire planet that it has had this profound of an impact on and I'd like to cover my tracks at least to a modest degree not dropping any more leads towards outing myself than I already have (if I can help it!) But I suppose it doesn't hurt to say that the high schoolers there were assigned folders with fictional identities that contained a job with a salary, a kid (potentially a wife), credit card debt, medical insurance debt, and likely a few other things as well. The folders also had pages for adding and subtracting your finances as well as a clip on calculator.

Most of the teachers played merchants at various tables symbolizing things that you may need or may not need to buy in a typical month such as food, daycare for your kid, buying or renting a property etc etc. There was also one teacher who played as the Credit Union counselor there to give advice. Doesn't sound so bad right?

Actually the event was hell. Or… at least for me it was. It didn’t have a huge impact on most of the students and many of them probably forgot all about it the very next day. However because of a variety of things including my attentive nature, profound memory, and autistic disorder I was extremely overstimulated in the environment... It was very loud, not to mention crowded with students pushing against each other who wanted to make sure they visited every table before the event ended as was the requirement and the papers in my folder also kept getting mixed up and the clip on calculator kept falling off adding insult to injury. The worst part of all however was the fact that all of the teachers who were playing the merchants had secretly been given the task of getting each and every student to spend all of their money. This I did not find out about until much much later, but when I did a lot of things in the event made a lot more sense such as how the car salesmen was trying to get me to buy the most expensive car, and the people at the food and dining table were trying to get me to buy the most expensive food option (though I remember a teacher at that table liked that I chose fast food so I could take my kid with me, as she had real life kids of her own, and thus cut me some slack!)

Looking back on the way the program was organized and presented (and after having done a buttload of research on the event!), I don't think it was meant to be taken too seriously, or really be that impactful in the way it was for me. Most likely it was designed for your typical brain-dead high school with a tough mental barrier to pierce - designed to give them a wake-up call that they will need to make a budget if they want to survive in the world and not run up a horrible credit card debt, and if you remember what I said earlier it should be pretty clear I am not that student - like with every presentation I have been made to attend however I thought it should be given the same weight and that there was valuable information to garner here. But what exactly was it I was supposed to have learned? 

It didn't help either that the way the event was presented made no sense at all. The roles the students are assigned concern people who have a degree that lets them get a job as a nurse or accountant, which in turn lets them buy a house and be able to raise a kid. The vast majority of the students who attended however will likely not have these things until years after high school or perhaps even never so why would you want them worry about that now? Why would you want them to think that far ahead in their future? Why not have them play the role of a college student or someone with a minimum wage job? That will likely describe most of them when they graduate…

These questions and many more would weigh on my mind forever after the event happened. When the teachers realized how negative of an impact it had on me they made it a point going forward in the future to always vet each event before enacting it so as to avoid inadvertently traumatizing a sensitive student. They and the other staff have also tried in vain to get me to see that "it wasn't a big trauma" but instead "was a bad play" among other things and while such advice has loosened the mental branding that the event imprinted on me, nothing thus far has succeeded in it being permanently erased from my mind. It still weighs heavily in my head nearly six years after it happened in 2017, and well past I graduated high school in 2019, I am aware this is not normal but I can’t really control these obsessions I have and although I’ve tried several approaches to remedy them nothing has provided a permanent solution thus far.

Around that time I also heard a gal remark to a student at a table across from me in a math class "My mom says if you don't provide your own food you're a baby". Given the context of the situation she could have been simply teasing him as he was considered by many of my classmates to be kind of dumb and served as the butt for a lot of their jokes, not to mention this gal could be pretty friendly on occasion including with me, but when I overheard what she said I took it pretty personally and after attending the budgeting event I got really…”invested” in establishing good budgeting and life practices out of fear that I would fail horribly in life if I didn’t. Thus, sometime after the event I told a high school group on Whisper what the gal said asking how you would be able to get the money to provide your own food and “still graduate without any vitamin deficiencies”. I suppose I must have come across as a bit of a privileged individual as the first reply I got was from someone who said "Don't be a spoiled brat and get a job while still going to high school" I then proceeded to chat them up about a few concerns including how I would have enough money to feed myself steadily on by which they replied with something around the lines of "Nah, fam if all you gotta do is provide your own food you can do so on $12 less really, and not go hungry" following up with "you are so naive rich boy lol" I then responded in regards to how I might get all my essential nutrients met to which they replied with "dude not everyone has a chef to provide fully balanced meals for them" before blocking me after I tried to message them further about various concerns surrounding the issue. Our private messages are long gone but to my recollection I remained pretty civil, asking him in a reasonable tone how to go about these things in spite of his judgemental and seemingly pretty ignorant attitude. I don’t think they were being entirely fair to me and my mom suspected at the time that they were “just jealous” but like with the budgeting event my brain really glomed onto the notion that I was a “spoiled brat” and a “nieve rich boy” after what was said to me. I also hated the fact (and still do) that I have these resources other people can be jealous of.

That event and those two students have undoubtedly contributed heavily to the mindset I currently have, but particularly the budgeting event as it is often the first thing I think about every day I wake up - asking myself “why were those teachers forcing me to fail?”. In regards to whether I’m spoiled however…well I hardly think I'm one to speak on the matter with an unbiased opinion. But to give you a good point of reference I will say my life as a six/seven year old was very much akin to the life of the six/seven year old blue cartoon dog from Australia to a near uncanny degree and in the sub of her show someone once described her as "fortunate". I’m not going to go to in depth about my childhood here but I will say that Bluey and I were fortunate to come from a stable household with parents who loved us both dearly, wanted to give us the best life possible, and who were financially stable enough to provide plenty of advantages in that regard, we also both went to Waldorf schools…sort of. I never really went to a Waldorf school proper like her, but my life academically from preschool to sixth grade was run by Waldorf trained teachers. 

Despite our fortune however neither of us got our demands met constantly. As a matter of fact my dad who was perhaps the real life equivalent of Bandit in near every sense of that comparison would often say "desire's a trap" when I wanted something from a gift shop, (though as a kid I always thought he was saying "[it] desires a trap" as in something you get trapped in is desired for this situation which I never understood!), my parents always did their best to support me in whatever hobbies I wanted to do as a kid, and gave me some valuable things and experiences such as on a birthday of mine or when we went on road trips - the latter of which happened at least once every summer when we traveled with a truck and camper from California to Michigan (once we went by train on the California Zephyr!). But I have never gotten anything like a private yacht, or designer clothing, the latter of which is supposedly another mark of being “spoiled” according to a reply I received on a subsequent Whisper post a few years back. I also haven’t ever been outside of the U.S. or on a plane in my entire life - but air travel is seemingly pretty cheap so that likely bears little relevance to my situation. 

My family was pretty lax when it came to chores however so in that regard perhaps I was a bit spoiled, and I often think that if they had pushed me to work a little harder when I was younger I might have been served far better when I turned 18, but because of the wake-up call I got in high school through the budgeting program, the students, and the individual on Whisper; soon after I became of legal age I got my first job as a dishwasher that I held down for a little over four years, only quitting the year previous because I was being made to work late shifts which did not coincide with my school schedule. All things considered though I think I did pretty well as I know for a fact that many of my classmates in high school wouldn't last a month or perhaps even a week with the demanding and harsh employer I had. I however saw through his rough exterior that he was a good guy and cared about his employees - he just ran a tight business. Even when I was assigned to work late shifts due to them keeping shorter hours as a result of COVID-19 (before then I worked the breakfast and lunch shift from morning till afternoon!) I still gave it a fair shot for at least two and a half years before quitting. I know the value of hard work and I speak from experience when I say that nothing feels greater than working for both what you want… and what you need.

After I quit I began living off of a trust fund I have for a few months, which we’ll talk more about later…I then got a job at a local coffee shop as a sort of assistant which is where I currently work. But surprisingly a lot of the skills I built up from working in a restaurant kitchen have not transferred over into a small cafe and I have had trouble moving up in this environment and making enough money to provide for everything I want and need without some form of assistance - mostly from my trust - unlike in the job I had previously. Currently I have also been applying for any dishwasher and busser jobs in my area that I come across on Indeed and Craigslist but thus far have not yet landed any. This could be due to a variety of factors but I’m willing to suspect that a fair number of the rejections have something to do with me given I spent all summer applying…bad interview skills might be the most likely explanation.

…

From high school going into college I also began researching everything I could about adulting, and took on more and more to solidify myself as someone who wasn't a "baby" including not only paying for my own food but paying rent, along with car insurance, car registration, gas, light bulb replacements, college tuition out of grants I receive (or rather received) and much much more. Rent is very high where I live and minimum wage might at best get you a sleeping bag and a tent to squat in under an overpass, (which I know I may one day have to be OK with). My mom also grew up in the area and in her generation you could rent a small abode on minimum wage, but that is unfortunately not the case anymore. 

Currently I live in a house on my parents property where I have lived all my life but I am afforded plenty of space of my own and I have always been determined to do everything I can to solidify myself as someone who does not need any help from family members. My mom would be happy to help me out more but my fear of being seen as a "baby" a "spoiled brat" or a "naive rich boy" has really served as a strong motivator to push myself hard, to the point where my psychiatrist once described me as "fiercely independent".

Back to my research however, some articles I found - namely on Quora -  have graced me with very helpful information such as on my "four walls" - a skill that I still apply every day often focusing exclusively on necessities when I don't have the money for fun stuff, saving money by relying on bus for nearly everything, not caving for a Lyft when it rains and showing my family that I’m not taking advantage of them by paying rent. In previous years I also did quite a few chores on my families property and my mom payed me $500 per month for what I did - sometimes even if I didn't do anything, but eventually school and work began to take over leaving me with less time to tend to things on the family side so I rightfully declined her offers and began to provide rent out of the money from my job, something I still do today making sure every dollar comes solely out of what I earn. In case you’re curious I currently pay $175 each month which covers my living space, car insurance, and wifi. This is pretty merciful all things considered but at least I can say that I’m trying.

I also found a blog post was not very helpful at all, and I really wish I could find it again because looking back, it was written in a way so opinionated and inane that it was almost laughable. The post was titled something like "10 things every 18 year old should know" and had advice like "college is a joke" "don't get married" and "your family is full of B.S" all of which could be true for a portion of those reading it. However one of the points was also to "kick feminist in the dust"?, I showed the blogpost in question to a school counselor as I was still in high school at the time and she suspected the guy behind it might be a white nationalist based on the overall tone he took and an image she found of him. Whether or not she was correct it certainly was not a trustworthy source, and if there's anything I'm thankful for learning in college it's how to fact-check... I really wish they taught this in high school (along with several other skills related to adulting)

I wonder though sometimes if I've been conditioned with a skewed perspective due to overgeneralizing the things ignorant high schoolers have said and from being essentially traumatized by that one budgeting event, so maybe there wouldn't actually be anything wrong accepting a little bit of help from my family. I still follow some old friends and junior high classmates on Instagram and many of them seem to have their lives well figured out. Two of the folks I knew from junior high for instance are happily married and one of them even has his own little girl. Most of my friends from high school have also left for bigger universities... Meanwhile, I'm still struck trying to fulfill my G.E.D and required transfer units at my community college. I was born in the year 2000 and likewise I’m going to be 24 this year. Since high school I’ve always thought growing up meant realizing that life is hard, you are owed nothing, and work is the only way to prove yourself worthy, but that mentality has not gotten me very far in the world. In fact I would argue it has put me behind my peers making me more dependent, so perhaps in my case, growing up instead means that I need to realize that it’s ok to have people who love and care about me, but perhaps more importantly that I need to love myself instead of being afraid that folks are secretly judging me constantly. I had a happy childhood with little knowledge of how money works, how much of it was in my name, and how fortunate I am, but now as an adult I just hate the skin I live in and haven’t felt truly happy in quite awhile. Money of course can’t buy happiness and I knew someone growing up who was the living proof of this, but with my mindset an abundance of it can cause a lot of confusion which in turn puts a huge damper on achieving it. Maybe it would be better if I grew up in a lower or lower middle class family, but I had no control over who I was born to…and burning up all my assets seems like a pretty bad idea all things considered. As I said before though I just have a lot of guilt surrounding the family I was born to…it’s almost like survivors guilt except for wealth, (is that a thing? Wealth guilt?) 

I don't have a lot of close friends as a good reference point for having spent most of my trust on a high schooler that turned out not to have my best interests at heart, but my psychiatrist once told me she still supports her kids through their college journey and they are way older than me... my mom also never ceases to remind me that we are not rich but rather an “upper middle class” family and that it is perfectly normal for parents to provide financial support when their kids are in college if they can do so, saying that her family did it for her when she was around my age. To be honest I wouldn't really mind it all that much. Or rather I wouldn’t mind if wasn’t so paranoid about how others perceive me... I suppose however that people can vary wildly, even if my brain has trouble admitting this fact with the way it is wired, and I know that people on the internet tend to lean more on the negative side, especially on Whisper (I say as I prepare to post this on the internet…). I would later learn as well that the gal I mentioned earlier who indirectly implied I was “a baby” did not have the best upbringing with a father that was abusive to her and her mom both of whom tried very hard to get him out of their life. The teacher who suspected this to me also speculated that "she didn’t have kind words role modeled for her [growing up]. She probably had a lot of mean talk role modeled to her." 

COVID-19 along with a conflict of priorities regarding school and work have collectively waylaid my college plans and as a result I have spent the better part of my college education adjusting to w doing work online along with working on incompletes to make up for my less than ideal performance. This is due in part to my trouble with online schoolwork, but also late shifts at my previous job messing my circadian rhythms up. My first semester in the fall of 2019 shortly before the virus would hit I took around 13 credits and got all A's with only one B, whereas these past few semesters I have mainly taken around ten to nine credits which has also slowed me down quite a bit. In those classes I have gotten some A's but also a lot of B's, occasionally a C, and during the last semester I attended even got my first couple of F’s. I used to be an honors student, but now I have been forced to turn in my metaphorical badge downgrading to just a student. 

Nevertheless I am still alive and kicking and probably more persistent then others considering I ran into a classmate fairly recently that shared a class with me in 2019 and withdrew from school entirely due to his distaste for online coursework…woukd I like more support? Yes I would, I set out to be a screenwriter when I came out the other end and thus constant sources of inspiration along with the money to fund programs and equipment for my creative endeavors along with networking in film festivals would certainly be a real boon.

I'd also like to indulge in my hobbies and passions. Writing is of course is one of them but I also love tabletop roleplaying games, Avant-Garde film, and would especially love having the resources I need to research an avant-garde film maker I was introduced to in a class I took during my first college semester. I also want to learn how to make Boba Tea and to beautify the space I currently rent as much as my family allows thus making it my own. My mom I can tell is secretly ashamed of how I’ve been treating it and to have be a place that accommodates my passions, filled with stuff I love and bought would really help in motivating me to keep it clean instead of leaving it to rot as what ended up happening following the year of 2020 - However all of these things are "wants" or rather things that I believe need to be worked for and as I’ve often told myself, I need to let what I want motivate me to work harder rather than expecting everything to be handed to me which is a guide point based on something else I read from another article on Qoura. Familial support is great and all but it seems there's only so much of it that you can accept before it starts affecting your personality and for me I worry it may already be doing that as I do occasionally say things that make me come across as entitled. Rich kids like myself often get a bad rap in the media and rightfully so with songs like "Rich Girl" by Daryl Hall and John Oats, and "Ain't it Fun" by Paramore (though that one is more about adulting in general!). I also recall also in the graphic novel The Sculptor by Scott McCloud that there's a character who the main protagonist calls "the trust fund kid" - his dad owns a mansion that he likes to crash. 

As I mentioned earlier I too have a trust fund of which I came into possession of at 21 years of age that was created for me by my grandfather and maintained by my father while he was alive. Currently it has a little over $200,000k in total assets with $10,000k available in cash. My situation is not entirely all that different from Willard95’s in and when I found their old post yesterday I in turn found the courage to dig out the draft of this one and polish it up a bit in regards to where I am now versus when I initially wrote it last year or so. Many people have commented to Willard95 that he does not meet the definition of a “trust fund baby” which gave me a fair bit of perspective and hope in regards to my situation, and like him my dad also passed away - though in my case he passed away when I was 14 leaving me plenty of fond memories from when he was around which I suspect was not the case for our friend Willard. If there’s one thing money can’t buy it’s an amazing father, and it wasn’t until I started watching Bluey and saw how revered Bandit is by fans of the show that I realized just how much I had lucked out in the dad department. I only wish he could be alive now to give me some perspectives on the issues I face today. 

Like Willard95 I also only withdraw money from the Trust Fund if I absolutely have to - mainly for food and school tuition (I got rejected when applying for Federal Aid after including my familial assets and thus I suspect I won’t qualify for to many other scholarships given what I have now versus when I started school at the age of 19!). I don’t want to spend it on anything to far beyond what falls under my four walls for the same reason I don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t do drugs of any sort including marijuana, and always always always put my phone in the glove compartment before setting out anywhere in my car even when it has no battery left (I don’t like driving except for a few select places after I almost had a collision when I first started!). There are many slippery slopes one can find themselves on and I’d rather keep my feet on sturdy ground walking along the plateau as far away from the mudslide as possible. That’s not to say I haven’t built up a few bad habits or addictions here and there such as getting distracted easily or spending a bit too much time on my screens to the point where I needed screen blockers like Cold Turkey and Jomo to play the role my parents used to of keeping me in check, but I’d rather not build more if I can help it. Particularly ones that could have severe consequences to my future such as spending all the money that has been set aside for me in my name. 

My question to you, therefore, resides in the title of this post - and if you've read this far you now have a fairly comprehensive picture of where I'm coming from in regards to it. Perhaps this is not my finest work or the best reflection of my skills as a writer but I’m currently short on time and right now I’d like to get this out so I can perhaps get some answers to some of the questions I have had about myself for years. Some advice on how to finally get out of this self destructive loop I’ve found myself in.

Thank you to those who have read this far.

TLDR:I worry a lot about how others view me after my experiences in high school and am very unsure of my place in the world. I was born into a fairly wealthy family and remained relatively sheltered until high school which served as a rude awakening to the reality that not everyone had it as good as me. Because of my amazing memory, the fact that I take everything literally as someone likely on the spectrum and the fact it could also be argued that I absorb negativity like a sponge I worked a job for four years from high school into college, after being told indirectly by a classmate in high school that I was “a baby” for not providing my own food, and subsequently another high schooler who directly called me a “spoiled brat” and a “Nieve Rich Boy” on Whisper. Taking on this job combined with Covid-19 and my “fiercely independent” mentality slowed me down tremendously in college and I wonder now if growing up for me means being grateful and loving myself for what I have rather than declining help at every turn. I simply don’t know how to move forward and utilize what I have without sliding down a slippery slope into debt. A fear that was perhaps first established by a budgeting event I experienced in high school that proved to be very traumatic for a variety of factors. I have a trust fund, a loving family, and a stable place to live, but I’m constantly worried about what other people think of me as a result of these things, and this is a mindset that has seemingly weighed me down, holding me back from true independence far more than it has helped me grow as a person.