Ask HN: Former gifted children with hard lives, how did you turn out?

1. there are some questions that technically I should answer "Yes", but is of milder scale of the spectrum. 2. I occasionally shared my upbringing to other people, and they are all very surprised. Once I shared with a group of "trainee chaplains", the teachers are commenting something like "why I'm describing my experience without the emotion", that is, when I talked about something very sad, I am smiling when saying it out. And they also pointed out that I often are asking "why" when facing different situations. I.e. I tends to become "philosophical".

May be because of my upbringing then, I loved mathematics since I was a kid. I remember myself once said when I was very young, "I love mathematics because it concerns truth, that is independent of our existence, nor the existence of the universe for that matter." In the hindsight, I think it might be some sort of protective mechanism for me to escape from the reality.

But perhaps because of my upbringing, I've taken many detours in life. When I was in secondary school, I have no motivation to study anything, and so my academic results were very bad. Fortunately, I like to read books, and got interested in popular books on math and physics, and also read a lot of computer magazines. That helps me having good grades in those subjects. Eventually I was discovered to be gifted because of physics olympiad. And that changed the course of my life. Had that didn't happen, I'm not sure if I would even got into university, let alone having a PhD.

So in this sense the "gifted" part of your question becomes my ticket to get out of my "hard life".

Unfortunately, life is complicated. First, having a "hard life", I don't have anyone to guide me making good decisions. Like the sort of decisions about making life choices, how to pursue goal in life (or resist the temptation to pursue too many goals), etc. Or work ethics, self-disipline, etc. Raw talent can only help so far, and as I ages I found that while my will can be strong, my body is getting weaker (e.g. can't get too much all nighters anymore.) Finally, I made a fatal mistakes to want to help everyone, including my parents. That puts me into a financial disaster and almost ruined my career and life.

How satisfied am I with my life now? "Thinking" helps. As a christian studying the bible theologically, it does shape my world view in a way I can "let go" and don't dwell in the hardship I had. As a researcher, my "thinking" is my primary value to get a job. A bonus of being a researcher is that I'm far away from home, so that I get much less connected with those negativity back home than in the past, and the change in my wellbeing is noticeable to my wife. Loving "thinking" means I love reading and listening to podcasts, enriching my perspectives in life.

The most fulfilling part of my life is my family, I have a lovely wife, a lovely baby.

Financially we aren't brilliant. But somehow, even as both my wife and I grew up from very poor families, we don't value money too much. I just don't find it motivating to make a ton of money, nor measures my success based on that. (It doesn't mean we don't have financial stress, as supporting a family of 3 including a baby in the UK is quite harsh.)

I feel that your life is getting better, but not to the point you felt satisfied yet. I hope you'll find your satisfaction, and meanwhile, don't worry too much. You have seen many hardships. You're tough and you can handle it when it comes. Don't dwell too much on those that may come though. Good luck!