A difficult decision

Only one difficult decision that I've made in my life stands out, and it's actually a recent decision. In the duration of my 8th grade year, my life wasn't going too well; I was getting bad grades, in the beginning I didn't have many friends if I had friends at all, and I had pretty much isolated myself from anyone including family and teachers. That year was also the year in which I started thinking about where I was going to go from there in terms of my life. I had a passion for drawing and would do so whenever I got the chance, even when in the middle of class, but that was it. My parents weren't being very helpful about the matter either, they told me to get good grades and figure out what I wanted to do later; I, however, wanted to figure it out right then and there. I decided to pursue the two things I loved the most as well as the two things that I considered myself the best thing, art; more specifically, game concept and design.
In the beginning it was more of an inward goal than a real decision, I was a very quiet person and I didn't tend to speak my mind often. I took a serious turn when it came to my works though, I started spending more time on pictures and paying closer attention to detail. In addition to that, I started taking peeks at nearby art college, as well as normal college, websites. This dragged on for most of the year and, luckily, I made a lot of friends that shared the same passion for art as me and they were there to support my goals. The hardest part was talking to my parents about it. My parents always wanted me to do something more along the lines of math, science or literature so I didn't quite expect them to 'extend their arms' in appreciation of my decision. When I did tell them, my assumption was pretty much spot-on. My parents weren't thrilled about what I had chosen to do, they were very negative towards the whole thing. My mother, for example, pointed out how expensive art schools were and how I might just be thinking about going into an art career because my grades were slipping. My father was more supportive since he was an artist as a kid as well, he also loves games just as much as I do, but he sided more with my mother. Still I had one of the biggest decisions ahead of me, I had to choose whether to go with what I love and pursue art, or make my parents happy by pursuing a more 'neutral' career.
Naturally, I was stumped as to what I should do; I loved art with such a passion but I would never want to disappoint the people that had raised me. In addition to wanting to impress them, I also wanted to be able to support them. I'm pretty well aware of the income that an artist usually makes (even in the game industry and suck) and it's pretty dismal compared to the income of a lawyer or a mathematician. I wanted to be able to stand on my own without my parent's support and without having to ask them for money on a daily basis or even at all. the decision that I ended up making was the decision to pursue art; why? Because I can enjoy what I'm doing. I'd rather have a job doing something what I love and get paid a little than have a job where I do something I hate and get paid a lot. I figure that if I'm really good at it and pursue it with vigor, then the job will be satisfying enough. After a lot of coercing, my parents agreed to support what I wanted to do; I believe that, in the beginning, they pegged my artistry as more of a fly-by hobby than an actual passion. I also recollected back to one of my favorite quotes "If you're good at something, don't do it for free." I consider myself talented at drawing for my age, and being paid to draw and design games is like a dream for me. So all in all I'm happy with the decision that made, my art has only improved since then and so has my understanding of what I want to do after high school and college.