What you describe sounds like a large, all encompassing depression. You write about feeling very distressed and unhappy and I hope you find a new path that serves you better than the one you are on. Who is prescribing your antidepressants? A psychiatrist or your pediatrician? Are you getting counseling from an effective and good therapist? All of these things are important. You may not be diagnosed properly, the depression may be part of another diagnosis for example. The inability to focus sometimes could be part of something like a mood disorder for example or ADHD and this is where a good psychiatrist does their job. I am going to suggest you take your brain health more seriously, or call it your mental health, and have a heart to heart discussion with a good psychiatrist or therapist and get diagnosed correctly and treated correctly. Some of this may be that you have to seek answers for yourself through reading books, etc. Tell your parents you need help, be insistive, or tell the person prescribing your meds, and don’t feel badly about yourself for needing further help. If you tell your parents and they won’t help, then tell someone else, keep telling and asking for help until you get the help you need. You have value and worth as a human being, no matter what anyone thinks or how your parents act. You are okay just as you are but right now you are struggling and need further in person help.

In some ways, all teenagers struggle emotionally and feel “less than” their peers. Even the popular kids feel a need to compete to be “better than” or “good enough” among their peers. It is really kind of sad. There is a lot of pressure on young people these days by parents in that the children have to be perfect. No human is perfect so this is not realistic. But the parent sees their own need for being good enough in the fact that their children are so wonderful, so amazing, so perfect. It is about the parents’ need to push the child to bring reflected glory upon themselves. I am okay as a parent if my kid gets straight As and goes to Harvard. The converse to this is “I am not okay as a parent if my kids has a brain health disorder and needs mental health help.” This is wrong and short sighted. Brain health disorders are problems in the brain just like cancer is a problem in the body. The problem is not in your soul being unworthy because of the depression, you are valuable as a human being for breathing air and being you.

This is the time in your life that you have to start thinking about things and finding your own way. I can remember the struggle of this for myself and I am old enough to be your grandparent. How we find self love and self value on our own, how we figure out what we think makes the world the way it is, our spiritual beliefs, etc. If someone has limits on us, meaning we are not good enough for them to love us, unless we do X or Y, get into this school or make all As, then this person has their own issues. It is not about your being bad or not worthy, it is about their lack, their emotional problems, their own self defeat. Sometimes our parents are not able to love us in the way we need but we can love ourselves in the way we need. A good life is waiting for you, it will be there in the fullness of time. 

When you say if you don’t make this competition you will never be able to make a good life for yourself is called catastrophe thinking. The world will not end if you don’t make this competition. Your life will go on and will turn out to be a good life, if that is what you seek. It is not either this or that will happen (called black and white thinking). I had to learn the fallacy of this through counseling and stop doing it a few years ago. But I am much happier now even with all my own problems and emotional needs. You deserve to find the self love that will heal you and the brain health help that will allow you to begin this journey. There is no shame in needing help for depression or for a brain health disorder. I have 3 kids with a mood disorder and varying types of depression. Once they got the proper help, the proper counseling and medications, I am seeing happier people and more successful in their lives. I am rooting for you, I send you hugs.