Comment by kritterLane

TLDR: Struggling due to suicide attempt

Due to neglect, I grew up with facial and foot deformities. I often hid my illnesses for fear of angering my parents. Things improved a bit after they left and I began living with other relatives. One summer however my parents asked me to visit them in a new country but would not allow me to return afterward. For a year or so, they refused to take me to the dentist until a caries destroyed most of the crown of my tooth. I could not bite on that side for almost a decade afterward. They constantly made fun of my body due to my congential conditions and tried to isolate me from other people by telling me that doctors are evil, that I was disgusting and causing those conditions myself. They often pressured me into acting as their accomplice in breaking the law or exploiting others. If their dealings did not work out, they would blame me for being useless (book smart as opposed to street smart), that had it not been for me they would not have been stuck in poverty.

At my school, many teachers believed that smart people were "selling out the country and good for nothing". They harassed me for doing well in class, tried to fail my midterms by misgrading them, accused immigrants like me of "stealing jobs" from local students, tried to steer me away from applying to colleges. Bullies would beat students up, myself included, right in front of the adults because no one around cared. My parents were not willing to be involved with the authorities due to their fake immigration status but still wanted to pretend that moving to the new country was a "correct" decision. They sided with the teachers in saying that I would not be able to handle "real" academic workload and that intelligence is useless or even a liability. They said that as an ugly, defective person I should get used to abuses, because life was never going to be better.

To say the least, I hated almost everything then. Eventually I attempted to take my own life and have been struggling with the medical consequences ever since. I could work only odd jobs, although most of the times now I am no longer suicidal, so at least that's an improvement.

The linked ACE test is from 2015 and probably outdated. *Admitted to a top-5 university globally with scholarship, many signs on the spectrum