Comment by tiznow

ACE of 4, gifted child who literally got the passion for education beaten out of them. I feel like my childhood, or dealings with my parents might have actually been pretty bad...but better than the present day. I was bullied as a kid, and never really supported during it, which made me incredibly angry and aggressive and I walked around for maybe the first 25 years of my life actively thinking I would get drawn into fights at any time. Doesn't help when your parents will also beat your ass for perceived disrespect, bad grades or public failings.

My parents also are just malicious, non-cooperative, myopic people, and my dad is an alcoholic who basically went my entire life never getting checked until my mother walked out on him a few months ago, as a result of him doing a handful of things so repulsive my younger sister (the emotionally intelligent one of the family) cut him off and my mother realized that she didn't actually have to spend the rest of her life tethered to this person. My mom isn't great, but good for her. In the interim my dad has become even more of an alcoholic and he sleeps for 15 hours a day, only getting up to eat, pee and pretend he's not an alcoholic while he teaches classes on Zoom.

I've had a rough go the last few years with employment/career, but things might turn around for me in as little as a few hours. It's a combination of having to deal with poor boundary management in some situations, and bad situations outright. I'm not where I'd like to be in life, but I'm not old--just old enough to consider that I won't be here forever. But every day I become more aware of how my childhood set the stage for my life.

I don't consider adult life to be hard, when things are working well -- it's just that they often don't. I'm okay with life, but only because I have the tools to make it what I want. The day to day kind of sucks.