Hi,
So A-level results day today. I had received my results but they were lower than expected. I attempted to negotiate with my firm university (I only had a Firm University, no insurance as all the other universities rejected me) but they cannot offer me a place. However, I had told my family that I achieved higher grades and got into that university.
I understand that this is wrong but I have my reasons.
To give a bit of context about my family, throughout my life, my mother had been emotionally and mentally abusive and controlling. My father is mostly absent and always takes her side on any argument with me. My home environment is hostile and tense in which I have the feeling of ‘walking on eggshells’ with everything I do or say. Throughout my life, I had been restricted from what I say to people to where I can travel even now, at 18, and had been told by my mothet that they own me.
For every decision given to me, they do not include me and they make it for me giving the reason that I am not mature enough to make them and that I could damage their reputation - if I disagree, they proceed to criticise me, not listen to me, shout at me, break into any room I am in, including the bathroom, whether it be 1am in the morning or 9pm at night, until I agree with them.
I had spoken to a family member before but they seem to be taking my mother’s side more and normalising it.
How does this relate to my A-level results and lying to them?
I initially wanted to go into Geography/International Relations due to my interest in global politics and Climate change. I had told my parents this back in Year 12 December, in which they responded by criticising me, name-calling, shouting, and talking about what other people would think as they feel that I would not be able to get an stable income job with my degree. I did have plans on how to deal with that issue and tried to tell them, but they refused to listen to me.
To avoid more conflict, I then decided to change to Computer Science and applied to top-ranking universities to ease the conflict from my parents. I did initially dislike how I had to do that but I did proceed to love the subject. It did help ease the conflict from them about universities but not with other things I do.
Whilst preparing for entrance exams I was subjected to a disruptive, noisy and hostile environment at home which made it very difficult to prepare and also revise for my A-levels.
I had not passed any of entrance exams and got rejected by 4 of my 5 choices of unis as a result back in May. A week before my first AS level exam, my parents knew of this, they went crazy in making me choose a uni to go to this year but I was planning to take a gap year to reapply. They dismissed and criticised me for the idea of a gap year that time. They had ensured that I agreed with them by proceeding to break into my room several times and shouting at me, criticising me, threatening to kick me out and not fund my education, if I did not go to uni this year.
I reluctantly agree with them but I do not apply for the uni I chose and waited for my last choice. They gave me an offer but with very high offer grades a day after the incident. However now I had the issue with dealing with funding, reporting my situation at home, having the school help me ensure that I go there.
This was done throughout the exam period, where before the exam I had to speak to the school about possible ways to help with funding and getting support to go to the uni. I had to speak to social services about my home situation after my exams.
From all of this, I had decided to either take a gap year and move out (which is risky as my parents can physically restrain me from leaving which they had done before) or go to uni and cut contact with my parents fully.
I had spoken to a family member about what had happened (not mentioning how I am planning to cut contact with my parents) before but they seem to be taking my parents’ side more and saying that I should agree with my parents but they had said that if I did a gap year, I have to stay at home.
Now flashforward to weeks before results day, I had told my parents that I felt stressed about the day and that I am trying to distract myself. They respond my downplaying and belittling me saying that I have no valid reasons to be stressed about it and proceeded to remind me every single day about it. Not allowing me to go out at all because of that day. The week before results day, using a family member, my parents fully turned to being fine with a gap year. But by that time, I had given up with doing a gap year, as I fully wanted to leave the house and not contact them anymore. So I planned that no matter what results I get, I will go to a uni but say that I got into my firm uni and show grades higher than my actual results.
That is what I did today, I had told them that I got higher grades and got into the firm uni, in which they proceeded to tell every single family member and celebrate that, yet they also decided to tell me to reject my firm uni to do a gap year and reapply for the choices I was rejected from, as it would look good for reputation.
I rejected their ideas and proceeded to explain that it would be harder to reapply to those choices especially for a competitive subject, like Computer Science.
However, now I feel bad for not telling the truth, but also disappointed in my family for seemingly caring so much about my grades and reputation than me.
Was it wrong for me to do this?