I have a friend who is completely, utterly hopeless in every sense of the word.

He's kind, a great listener, introspective, observant, and honest with himself. He can write a good English paper, and he's great about being opinionated. He's also really good at Smash Bros.

That about covers it for his positive qualities. His negatives ones?

Where do I begin...

Well, to start: The only reason why he hasn't killed himself is because he's afraid of pain, or of messing up.

Here's a short, incomplete list of everything he lacks - some of these he fears on improving: Weight Social skills. Public speaking abilities. Skills outside of chores Physical capabilities Confidence A stress-free home environment. The willingness to go outside of his comfort zone. At all.

Forget job interviews, he shuts down at the idea of 1-on-1 interview practice with a close friend. He has no Major, no drive, and has been in community college for 3+ years. He often only takes 1 class a semester.

The only reason why he's going at all is to placate his mom and to get away from her. I can't have a conversation with him without the conversation steering toward his ranting about his home life, and especially his mom. In short, from what I gathered from our many chats: His mom sucks. He's in bad, bad need of professional therapy and she won't recognize it. She doesn't take him seriously, piles work onto him whenever she has a bad day at work, is petty, has many double-standards, and openly gossips about his incompetence when she knows he's in hearing range. She has also locked him away from his own bank account years ago, preventing him from accessing any of his own financial aid and he barely gets any lunch money. He must get everything pre-approved with her when it comes to money. He could force the account to be given back to him, but she constantly holds the guillotine-threat of kicking him out over his head. She also doesn't trust him, so she checks his account every single night, and it's far past the time she said she'd give it back.

Yeah, he's suffered emotional abuse from her all his life, and he's completely under her thumb. They have massive arguments all the time over basically nothing.

The thing is, all of that goes away whenever he's around Smash. He turns into a confident, serious player and coordinator that even successfully ran his own tournaments for a while. He's well-known in the community and has the respect of the local top players. He's also great at giving advice. The moment Smash is done, however, a dark cloud of depression physically descends upon him. It's almost like I can see his mood just metamorphose him into a completely different person.

He's also paranoid, extremely so. He's also afraid of trying new things, and he doesn't want to be the one to fix his own problems, despite his awareness of the situation. Whenever he's left alone, his thoughts mercilessly attack him. He has frequent breakdown episodes. He either gets upset or shuts down when anyone other than me or another friend give him advice.

Heck, one of the reasons he quit the free therapy provided by the school is because they couldn't cure all his problems quickly. The thought of the limited time-frame per appointment actually caused him more stress than the therapy took away, due to how his over-analytical and paranoid mindset works.

I'm at a complete loss here. He's 21 years old and his situation is so pitiful that I'm scared for him. I can't help him. No one in our group can't help him. He's such a depressed, broken man that he can't even help himself. He lives each and every day just... surviving, hoping that he'll get to hang out with us sometimes or attend Smash tournaments.

I don't know why I just spent the past 40 minutes typing this out, honestly. I just hope that maybe there's some small bit of hope out there. Anything, really. One day his financial aid will run out, or he gets kicked out, whichever happens first. A person like him wouldn't last a day out there.