Had a really bad time in high school and college.

I have social anxiety and only had a small handful of friends. Pretty much only talked to and hung around with my best friend who was from the same neighbourhood as me.

Someone decided to spread a rumour about us that we were gay lovers.. resulted in relentless teasing and stopped us from hanging out any further, pretty much went our separate ways after it got too bad.

Spent my last 2 years of high school depressed with no friends. Never said a word in any of my classes. Spent lunch periods in a bathroom stall. Was afraid to go outside because I might run in to someone that goes to my school. Pretty much stayed at home all the time playing video games. Would spend entire summer breaks staying inside and not talking to anyone, would go out a small handful of times in the 2 months I'd have off.

It remained this way throughout the rest of my time there. Didn't show up for picture day senior year. Didn't go to prom. Didn't show up for graduation. I just wanted to be invisible.

I was able to get in to a decent university with my grades and was pretty excited about re-inventing myself in a new place, though my isolation tendencies eventually left me off in the same place. I would go to classes and not say a word, didn't really know any one. This depression spilled in to my academic performance and I ended up flunking out.

Super depressed and feeling like a failure, I ended back home with my mom and dad. I continued to stay online and play video games pretty much all day.

Without going in to too much detail, I ended up starting a business having to do with gaming. The business snowballed hard and I ended up with a staff team of over 100 people. I became friends with a lot of these people and even got in to a relationship with one of them.

It is hard balancing the friend/employee dynamic and it is probably ill advised, but I'm happy that I'm far more functional socially these days. Having a girlfriend these past few years has given me a lot of validation and done wonders for my self confidence. Being a multi-millionaire is pretty great too, though not nearly as great as I dreamed it would be as a kid.

So yeah, things turned out ok, though my situation wasn't that bad, there are many others who were worse off. It could have gone in the opposite direction for me though and I'm happy that it didn't.