Just curious, have any of you been to your own high school reunions, and talked with friends and acquaintances who were in school with you? Or caught up with those people on Facebook?
Not every hearing kid has a great h.s. experience. It's a time of struggle for many, many people. Lots of angst, lots of unrequited "love," lots of body-issue troubles. Boys think they're not big enough; girls think they're not small enough. Too smart, not smart enough; too popular for the wrong reasons, not popular enough. You name it, kids have suffered from it.
Some of the kids who weren't very popular in h.s., for reasons of shyness or just not wanting to do the "in with the in-crowd" stuff, went on to have spectacular success as adults. Some of those everyone thought would be "most likely to succeed" - didn't. Some kids everyone thought were trouble did indeed get into a lot of trouble as adults; some who were fun-loving, smart, successful types in h.s. turned into fun-loving, smart successful adults.
A friend of mine, valedictorian of his class in the school one town over, very smart, likeable, guy with a wonderful future ahead of him - killed himself 3 days after h.s. graduation because his girlfriend had broken up with him.
I think of him to this day, many, many years later, with grief and compassion, wishing he could have stayed around to make of his life what everyone thought he would.
So - whatever your h.s. experience was, be assured that other people have gone through the same thing. You are not alone in facing certain challenges that just come with the territory of being a teenager. Add being deaf or HoH on top of that, and yes, you've got some stuff that the average person didn't face.
But - you survived it. You learned from it. You have a sense that you've missed something, and I'm sure you did, because EVERYONE misses SOME-thing.
But that's the past. As Jiro said, you're an adult now. You want to travel? Then travel. You want summer camp? Believe it or not, there are summer camps for adults. You want to have crushes and have the thrill of falling in love? Well - if you're single, what's stopping you?
It's good to address your feelings about it. At the same time, don't blame everything on being deaf/Hoh. You might have had a lousy experience even if you had been hearing! (Don't know if that thought will cheer you up or not...)
Anyway, good for you for getting the feelings out, and I encourage you to address those issues that you feel most strongly about, and bring some fun into your adult life. So long as it's all legal, nothing to stop you!
Yay!