Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment I really just need someone to listen

This may sound stupid but I'm 27 years old and on the verge of suicide.

I am so alone. I was raised by abusive parents. I had no outlet (books, computer, others interested in intellectual development) while growing up, even though I begged for learning materials. I try to rationalize everything, find order, meaning, and patterns in all aspects of life (including human behavior which has nearly driven me insane), and live my life with an open mind. These traits are natural to me and my thirst for knowledge is insatiable.

I believe my parents have instilled a form of cognitive dissonance by which I subconsciously doubt myself and my conclusions, even if they are experimentally verifiable. My father had a "do as I say, not as I do" mentality which may have been tolerable to anyone who goes through life mindlessly, but certainly not someone who tries to make sense of it. I believe I have shut my mind off rather than try and conceptualize it.

I have been in and out of psych wards for the past several years. I cannot talk to anyone. I cannot bounce ideas off of anyone. The majority of the people I encounter are more concerned with their own self-aggrandizement than things that actually matter.

I have been diagnosed with everything: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, ADHD, depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc. It's all (in my mind) a crock of sh*t, but without outside perspective I cannot really ever know if I'm crazy or not. The only perspective I have is my parents, who are so blatantly incompetent and willfully ignorant, who repeatedly tell me I am mentally ill. They pull the "we have known you our whole lives, we know you better than you know yourself" gimmick. I knew from around eight years old that they never truly understood me, nor would they ever. We are a different species.

These people don't know basic psychopharmacology and are telling me I have a chemical imbalance. You can only hear these types of things so many times before the irrationality of it drives you insane.

School was always a joke. I would half pay attention and ace everything thrown at me. How the teachers didn't pick up on this I don't know. It might have been because I was semi-holding back due to overwhelming stress at home, although I vividly remember in early second grade begging my teacher to give me harder assignments. I was never set up to thrive.

I hear about all of these children skipping grades, graduating early, and even graduating college at an early age. I KNOW I could have done that given the chance, yet I'm always playing other peoples' games in what they allow me to do. After all, what does a child know about the world, especially if he is denied information about it?

I tried college. I attended one of the top engineering schools in the country and dropped out. The material was too easy, was too slow, and I couldn't stand being around my "peers" who were supposed to be the best and brightest in the country. When I get bored I get depressed, and since I now had actual choices in my life I dropped out of school to get away from the torment.

I've tried school at several different colleges now, thinking I could find "my people" and make life bearable, but the same thing keeps happening. The depression has grown so strong I no longer want to try. I feel I could have done great things with my life if I had a loving family, a support system, and an opportunity to succeed. If I had been born ten years later I could have had (most likely) access to the internet at a young age and things would be much different.

Having said all of this, if anyone is still listening, is there something inherently wrong with me? Am I making all of this up? Am I irrational in my thoughts, feelings, and actions? Is it really me and not everyone else? Is the love of stupidity the norm for our race? Are we not meant to do great things? Am I eternally doomed to be around people I try to like but can't, who try to take advantage of me every chance they get? Is there no purpose in life? Do we as a race not value ideas anymore?

For what it's worth I also did some time in the Army (infantry). Mental torment is far worse than any physical punishment you can imagine. I am so tired of being along, having no answers, and above all, not being able to talk to people who actually "get it". Or perhaps I'm just delusional and everyone else, who cannot even pay their bills on time, is right and my ability to reason is largely a hindrance to a happy life.

Am I mentally ill? Am I of above-average intellect? Or is it possible I have been gifted my entire life but never knew it? When I found this site I felt a little something deep inside me, so perhaps my subconscious knows something I don't.

- Jason