There’s so many things I can relate to in this post. One thing particularly struck me though
Point being, this uncle who I have looked up to all my life always warned me off of the mistakes he made in his life, to try to have me learn from his mistakes. And in a matter of 3 months, I felt like I had thrown away everything he had ever told me and made every mistake possible. I threw myself hard into this relationship with a girl who apparently just wanted to play me, let her fuck with my head, and then resorted to binging on drugs and alcohol and self harm to try to survive. All at once I had let my uncle down, and I was far too ashamed to face him.
Advice is nice, but when it comes to real life, particularly, emotional life, no one learns from advice. Regardless of what anyone tells you, you have to learn from experience. If your uncle is half as good a guy as you imply he is, then he knows this. Don’t beat yourself up over this.
It's just as you say, he did know that. And he told me that he knew I'd mess up some day; that the smarter people are, the less likely they are to take others' advice as law. Like I said, he's not mad about any of it, I'm just upset I couldn't live up to those standards.