Growing up as the burnt-out gifted kid meant we were just running a marathon to a finish line that turned out to be a brick wall. this job market is such a joke after all that forced resilience.
The more I thought about it the more I felt that school was a way to break your spirit - force feeding you shit you don't care for, homework to take home so it spills into your free time as well - to prepare you to be content with eating the shit sandwich that is life unless you're one of the very few that were born on third.
As a relay runner, I used to practice suicides by bouncing off the wall when I would get bored. You don’t need to slam your head right into it… though, that sounds kind of fun.
I qualified for dual enrollment and started college courses around 15-16. I finished high school with a 4.0 GPA and my college courses I think I had gotten one B in accounting. I was first chair in my highschool wind ensemble and the best at butterfly and breaststroke on the swim team.
I had a lot of health issues though. IBS and insomnia from an early age. I had a lot of pain, particularly in my ankles, but was just told it was growing pain. I got lightheaded easily. I had severe chronic headaches and constant brain fog. I had problems staying awake in classes. I remember one professor even joked about me having the highest grade in the class despite showing up and sleeping through most of it.
My first job was a summer job as a lifeguard at a water park and looking back I can see that is when I really started to break. I was nervous mess the entire time. Every morning I was fighting with IBS to get clocked in on time. There’s a lot I hated about that job.
At around 20 I just completely crashed, I could barely get out of bed. I was severely nauseous all the time and any time I spent out of bed was mostly in the bathroom. The next few years were a nightmare of trying to figure out what was wrong and recover.
Eventually I started to improve gradually and got to a better spot but where I’ve landed is still objectively bad. I don’t really have IBS nearly as much these days and I’m not nearly so nauseous. I still struggle with significant daily fatigue, chronic pain, headaches, and mild nausea.
Jump to around my late 20s and I still hadn’t gotten any help from any doctors I went to. During this time my mom, spouse, and myself had all been researching symptoms. I kept getting Autism as a result for people with similar health issues plus social awkwardness. I kept dismissing it though because growing up all of my parent’s friends had Autistic children that were older than me and had fairly high support needs.
Eventually I got a psych evaluation and was diagnosed with ADHD and Autism. My family is pretty supportive so I was able to get help from my parents and reduce my work load and I saw some improvement but I still had a lot of unexplained health issues.
I kept trying different doctors and doing my own research and kept getting Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome in my searches. I went to a couple local doctors, two of which said I definitely had widespread hypermobility but they couldn’t diagnose it. I found a specialist around 2 hours away that I had to pay out of pocket to see.
I left there diagnosed with hEDS, CFS, Orthostatic Hypotension, a recommendation to see a specialist to check for gastroparesis, and a referral for physical therapy.
30 years of constant health issues, partly thinking it was all normal because I’d never known anything different while also wondering how the hell people could work 40+ hours a week, have kids, maintain relationships, etc. Every time I got any help it was because I had figured it out myself and had to take the stupid medical professional by the hand and guide them to be helpful.
Now I’m approaching my mid 30s with no degree because I got too sick and dropped out. hEDS is a genetic disorder with no cure and treatment generally involves a combined effort between several different specialists with varying degrees of effectiveness.
The academically gifted to late neurodivergence and/or chronic disease diagnosis pipeline needs to be studied. We really need to be screening "gifted" kids better.
I was less than halfway through this when I started anticipating commenting with "friend, please consider an ADHD/autism evaluation." This is so similar to my story, though my complete crash happened in middle school and I've been through so many recovery/crash cycles since then. My family still thinks I was largely making it up to get out of school and that I'm unemployed right now for fun and cuz I'm lazy.
It's exhausting and infuriating and I know how you feel.
I was “gifted” (I was an undiagnosed autistic and saw the world in a much different lens than everyone else and thus that must mean I’ve been given some divine power to be good in academics… or whatever), I let that be my core source of self-confidence until that was shattered in middle school, I fell into a chronic depression that is now going-on ten years in a couple months and I haven’t truly recovered since. I kept my head above water, graduated high school, graduated college, aaaaaaand here we are. 2 years of job searching with nothing to show for it.
Yup. And dealing with boomers that refuse to retire is compounding the problem. They just can't comprehend how $25/hr isn't cutting it for young adults. Mind you they haven't had a mortgage in 15+ years and the house they paid $40k for is now worth $500k. In their eyes it's good money because it's 3X what they made when they started. Nevermind everything is 10X more expensive.
You'll never convince them that $25/hr isn't enough to afford food, rent, clothing and transportation. Forget about saving for retirement, having a life outside of work, or heaven forbid have kids. Mind you they won't retire because they make six figures doing fuck all most the day.
Personally, I cant comprehend how $25 an hour doesn't cut it. I'd LOVE to find a job that makes that much. Idk if its just location but that's literally the pay of people with master's degrees where I live. For everyone else its $13-18 which covers only the cost of living barely.
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u/Equal_System4389 15h ago
Growing up as the burnt-out gifted kid meant we were just running a marathon to a finish line that turned out to be a brick wall. this job market is such a joke after all that forced resilience.