Has anyone gone through that? And how did you get over it?
And how do I get past the walls that I put up? Its like my brain has atrophied because I desperately tried to be normal, or rather my parents normal, for so long...
Yes, and yes. For what it's worth, I was identified early as gifted and still went through the same thing because nobody explained what that meant: they basically said, "You're good in school but that's it, so don't let it go to your head." Being ID'd is far from a miracle ticket to your own best life...most of the advice I was given was terrible, and the "opportunities" either hollow wastes of time or actively destructive. I had to learn how to think for myself on my own, and it took a lot of "unlearning" of the bad advice. So don't assume that you're a million times farther back than you would have been if ID'd. School isn't all it's cracked up to be, sadly.
As for getting over it: I decided to teach myself how to be gifted and see how far I got. Now I wish I'd started doing that back in fourth grade when I was ID'd! It was hard at first because I wasn't sure how to find resources that were both high-quality and accessible, but it turns out that's one of the first steps in learning to teach and think for yourself. I quickly found out that there's a lot more to "the life of the mind" than they teach you in class. I started off with classically "intellectual" things from high school: chess, math, Shakespeare, history, just to give myself confidence that, yes, I could do the classic smart-kid thing if I tried. Then I continued with the things I liked and dropped the things I didn't, and kept branching out for new subjects in the meantime. If you have a local university, I highly recommend getting borrowing privileges if you can. And learn how to tell the difference between good and bad information! That's key.
As for the fury that comes with knowing now what life could have been like... It comes and goes. It took about six months to really break through the wall of "HOW THE F*** COULD THIS HAVE HAPPENED?!?" to get to "Thank God I finally figured it out instead of doodling around for the rest of my life not knowing any of this." It's great, and worth the wait.
