EDIT: This turned into "This is what my High School experience was like! Look at how awesome it was! Here are all my classes!" so feel free to skip out. Everyone talks about how High School sucked for them and they had a good future in College to look forward to. I'm constantly thinking the best year and a half of my life were my final 3 semesters of High School. It was a private, high quality, international, extremely liberal school I was friends with all my teachers I had practically no homework I had dozens of accomodations due to Aspie stuffs which made a ton of stuff really easy I was in 3 laid-back English semester classes Literary analysis (practically no written stuff though) with a teacher that valued "reading for fun" above anything else An awesome fun take on Shakespeare by the same teacher as above Argumentation/Debate, which was a blast. The most homework I had to do was for 2 things: one was a "Which is better, Nintendo or PlayStation?" debate, and the other was an in-depth persuasive speech on why the way we argue is flawed at a fundamental level because we care more about positions than underlying ideas. (Came up with that one on my own, loved every second of it.) I was in a laid-back Spanish class because I was failing the advanced literature course in Spanish class (In the more laid-back one, I literally didn't turn in a major homework assignment and the teacher didn't notice) I had AP Econ which was a breeze... and also really fun and informative! AP Chem and AP Physics were my 2 favorite classes ever For AP Chem we had no homework and no lab reports and it was literally me and one classmate sharing a classroom with the 3 IB HL chem people For AP Physics we had little to no homework In both of those, after the AP exams, since we had 2 more weeks and no class, we got to make Rube Goldberg machines and we learned to play Bridge and MahJong IBHL and AP Math were both extremely easy. I got a 7 in the IB exam and a 5 in the AP exam (yeah, I took both because they advanced me a year and ran out of program, basically.) I won the Award they give to the Senior who has the best grasp on math and who's the best at explaining it to others... as a Junior. AND as a Senior. Only person in the history of the school to win it twice. Everyone loved me for how nerdy and smart I was. People around me complained about stuff every so often and I always felt like... it made no sense, since everyone was so nice. I made a genuine group of friends... none of whom I've actually ever seen again :/ because they all moved to different countries. There is... no way anything I do in my life from now on will top that, is there? I just want all that back. I know it's probably just the depression talking but... will my future experiences exceed these ones?
I'm sure they will. Just give it time. For me, college was both a high point (due to reasons similar to yours above) and the point I finally got meds for my depression. But some amazing things have happened since then, like getting a good job, my first two IRL relationships, starting cosplay, and so on. I don't know what your future high points will be, but I know they will happen. Have patience. And we're here for you in the meantime.
There's definitely the potential for topping your high school experience. (I think it will definitely happen, but my brain freaks out if I make too confident statements, so I have to put the "potential" there). Mine was similar: things were easy, I did well, I had dispensations for health issues, I had great friends.... And I've had even better experiences since then. Even with depression and anxiety.
How? I just don't see the possibility of that, not without a school system that pushes me into making friends... college here is literally "show up, go to class, go home" The closest I ever got was meeting someone who was as much of a nerd as me... and he invited me to his RP group but that ended up not panning out. I want to make friends. But I want to make friends who like the stuff I do, and who won't judge me and who I can relate to. That's pretty much impossible to do irl right now.
