Practical Advice How do I successfully play catch up?

A little background of myself: I work in a basic grocery store and work as an umpire for youth baseball during the season. Baseball is done for the summer and again I have mixed feelings, just more intense because of how the season ended. There was a tournament here for 10u and 11u kids and each player on the top 2 teams got rings for their effort. It was awesome hearing the celebrating from the winning team and the same from the 2nd place team while they tried valiantly to come from behind to win only to come up JUST short. Kids had a lot of fun is what I guess I'm saying. Then my thoughts turned to the fact that this piecemeal work in baseball is the closest I'm gonna get to kids of my own. And I definitely blame my jackass parents for it. Looking back I can say with 100% confidence that because they never told me no, and because my mom put teaching strangers in her college classes ahead of raising me, her fucking SON, I crashed and burned and am now put so far behind that playing catch up is an exhausting full time job. She was working so much that she never had time to lay down the law and make me study in middle and high school. She was also so convinced in her own mind that I was mentally handicapped as some sick fashion statement (kind of like trans is being used now; you'll never convince me that the MASSIVE spike in trans-identifying kids, especially among so-called celebrities, isn't just following the latest trend) that she used it to get me out of any sort of work I should be doing. I never had to get a job in high school to prepare me for college and I was allowed to wait on that first job until a full year AFTER high school. My dad wasn't much of a good father either as when I went to live with him he was just as hands-off as my mom was. After ANOTHER year he decided that I had to go to college but gave ZERO guidance. No sit down going through pros and cons of each degree program, no talk about trades vs 4 year colleges, he just let me go with whatever I wanted to go with which is how I went with a degree in theatre which was a HUGE mistake. I couldn't find a job with that degree that wasn't in local community theatre to save my life, and this was allowed to go on for a DECADE before I realized something needed to change. So at this point I'm heading into my early 30s with no career, no direction, no prospects, no car, no relationships, no nothing. Oh about that relationships thing. My mom (and to a lesser extent my dad) pushed the mental health thing so hard on me that I felt I had to fight a never-ending war against it before I went out and tried to find a partner. I had to find the right medicine to be put on for life, and to find the right therapist for life, and use both to get "normal" before I could even consider dating. I would always think of myself as "lesser than" or as not good enough for a partner, and I still do. And as a result of this massive stunting of my growth I haven't had any chance to create any savings. Shit I apparently still owe the state $1700 in back taxes and my last leasing company $900 in cleaning of my old apartment. Oh and as a final note being raised this way created a disdain for organized religion, the only maybe good thing to come out of all of this but it also means that I just eliminated one of the best ways to find meaningful romantic relationships: the church. And it makes me a cast out from both ends. I'm atheist so the right wants nothing to do with me. But I'm also pro-life, pro-ICE, and want men out of womens' sports. Don't want to turn this into a political discussion, just pointing out how politically lonely I'm feeling. So here I am, about to turn 40 and I've never had a meaningful relationship, never had a chance at a good career, have nothing in savings, taking meds for life that have made me addicted to such a degree that I can't even sleep without them, and hating every second of my existence. The only joy I get is working baseball games and even that is a chance to see kids grow up around me as a proxy to having my own kids, which I think is a little unhealthy.

I'm glad you like umpiring so much

On the one hand, you parents almost certainly did screw you up in some way. On the other hand, pretty much everyone's parents screw them up, it's more a matter of the degree. They probably got fucked up by their own parents too to some degree. They were bad in some ways, and continue to be bad. There's also parents who are drug addicts who sell their kids into prostitution at a young age, or visit any number of heinous crimes upon their children. Your parents may be above-average fuck ups in a lot of ways, but they've also done at least some good things, and as far as I know they haven't done anything that they would have been put in jail for if they had been caught doing it.

It's possible that another person could have had parents that tried to force them to do things, and because of that they felt compelled to rebel, and therefor things that they might have otherwise enjoyed or had an interest in were ruined, and therefor they blame their parents. Being hands-off or controlling can both be seen as the road to ruin.

Really regardless of whether your parents are to blame, it's probably best to think about how you can set your life on the course you want it to take. In a sense, the less you have, the more important it is to be grateful for what you've got, because you have fewer paths to happiness without that gratitude.