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

To your point about first impressions, I appreciate hearing a similar outlook about such circumstances.

I have pretty severe scarring from a thing I am afflicted with, and it's very noticeable. I will often cover them up for the first few months. I am not shy about them at all, I do everything else with them visible. Shopping, gym, out with friends etc. But I gain nothing from that in the workplace, and stand to lose face in certain scenarios in the early phases.

Dating is different, all visible, all cards out on the table. If that detail about me would cause issues for them I'd like to know ASAP.

Concur regarding the bike, it's as good as a nootropic.

A well-meaning but frustrated parent might try that move in the moment but not consider what it could mean from their child's perspective. "My parent could leave me" should never be a potential consequence for misbehaving.

They're probably more aware of it because of worse things they've endured like it. A severe example is kicking your kid out of the car and driving off without them. Or packing them a bag and forcing them out of the apartment.

This is why we never did even ostensibly innocuous lying like Santa Claus.

"I'm damn good at it. I just cut our phone system expenses by $300k/yr, and I'm in a project to cut our EMR expense by 70% over the next 9 months."

Tell me you work in PE without telling me you work in PE.

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