My mom has planned out my gap year, and my girlfriend says “nay.” Things could NOT be more complicated!?

Okay, here’s the starter: I’m soon to be an unemployed high school graduate, and I have no choice but to take a year off between high school and college, as I have not applied to colleges yet (my bad, things are tough). It sounds lovely to me actually, because I’ve burnt myself out in school and could greatly benefit from a break. My mother is a fancy-pants bourgeois lawyer, and she has her mind set on me living in Europe for a year under her nickel, sounds great right?

Wrong. My steady girlfriend of 1.5 years wants me to live near her and work with her dad to start a small cafe business and work the sound at an all ages music venue while I work a steady job in Podunk Baton Rouge. My first instinct is to side with my girlfriend, as living in Europe for a year (in my opinion) won’t teach me anything and is on the side of self-indulgent, but my mother says that it can provide a world-changing experience and that I’d be a fool to pass it up. My girlfriend and her parents both like me a lot, and are begging me to stay and help, while my mother and most of my family are very against me staying, they call it “sitting on my ass doing nothing.”

Help! I can’t please everybody! D: