[zwaps]

This is supposed to be helpful:

First, it reads as if you are horribly insecure and / or lonely. Your need to signal superior intelligence to convince us of your self-worth is a sad state of mind, and, from my experience (I am also "gifted" so this means something to you), denies you a lot of meaning and happiness. I also realize you seek to display your bitterness. It doesn't hurt us, though. Not in the way you think. Rather, it's just me being sad you had to go through all that and become all that.

Second, your need to insult or demean others makes you extremely unlikeable, even to people who would have something to offer to you and who would live up to being a worthwhile companion. There are probably more people like you around than you realize, but many would have little interest to engage with you.

Lastly, there are areas of life where I am sure you lack a lot of experience (I am not going to speculate what applies to you, but things like genuine love or being loved, sincere pain, war, near death, creating a human life, ending a human life, crushing poverty, decadent mind-blowing hour long intercourse and many more things may come to mind). Your standards, especially that quip about travel, may really seem laughable to someone else. Just so you know.

I hope you get better, sincerely.

Edit: My reading of your further comments make me think I should have written this less confrontational, but let it fill the urge you had. In any case, what I mean is that I sympathize. I do think you could get to a place where you're less trapped by your past.

[madaxe_again]

Thanks, and no worries, my original post was... raw. Representative of my inner weltanschauung, but not of the self I present and project, and not intended to signal anything, just to provide context. The intent was to share the unspoken unspeakables for others who might share these experiences but are more self-censorious, as most in this position are.

As to experience, I have lived what feel like many lifetimes - I have loved and been loved (I’m married to a woman who challenges me, and I wouldn’t have it any other way), I’ve had the most spectacular pain, emotional and physical - the senseless deaths of dear friends, severe and life-threatening illnesses (writing a will at 26 thinking it’ll be needed imminently is a bag of laughs), I’ve lived in abject penury, while desperately trying to keep the lights on for my sister, after our parents split and both absconded, leaving us alone in the U.K. at 17 and 11, respectively. I took a life, accidentally, as a young child, and it haunts me still. I could create life, but I won’t, as I carry a fistful of genetic disease. Hour-long? You’re not trying ;)

I’m working on leaving behind my baggage, but like The Luggage it does rather like to follow me - therapy is helping, and this is actually part of it - I am under instructions to talk about this stuff, openly and honestly, and to see that people aren’t as judgmental as the wounded child within believes.

As to travel - slow travel opens the mind to so many possibilities, so many ways of living, what matters to people, how they differ, how they’re the same. The scenery is just the backdrop for the infinite theatres of human experience.

Oh, and I absolutely am insecure. Confidence oozes from my ears, as far as others are concerned, but inside its little but doubt, guilt, and shame.

Anyway. Thanks. I really do appreciate the reply.

[apotheon]

> I am under instructions to talk about this stuff, openly and honestly, and to see that people aren’t as judgmental as the wounded child within believes.

In my experience, you should prepare to be disappointed. Judgementalism is how people survive in a world that rewards niarcissism; they judge others to be inferior to give themselves the strength to go on. It's an arms race.

Intellectually, I understand that people are mostly crap. Emotionally, I keep making the mistake of trusting people's supposed good intentions when I feel like I've gotten to know them, and finding out that, once again, they're judgemental assholes who will fabricate tales to tell themselves so they can absolve themselves of meaningful guilt.

There are good people, non-judgemental people, caring people, who can sympathize with you and who deserve your trust (assuming you're a well-meaning person, as I suspect from what I've read here). From your description of some aspects of your life, it seems you've found one or two, and I'm happy to hear it.

Mostly, people want to tell you fairy tales about the good in the world. Most of it is pretty mediocre; even middling is a stretch. It's not distributed evenly, though, and it's worth holding out hope. I was lucky enough to meet one of those rare lights in my early teens, and we're still in touch. I was lucky enough to meet several others along the way, and I charish their influences on my life. I'm lucky enough to live my life with one now, and for quite a few years up to this point. They make it all worthwhile.

[zwaps]

I'm glad you could use your talents to build what seems to be an exceptional life. In truth, I'd rather have you with more self-confidence and pride than less. Perhaps you'll find some less academic but skilled people to learn from. I was humbled (in a good way) by exceptional master craftsmen when I took up machining - especially older ones that honed their skills for decades. Paradoxically, this made me more confident in my intelligence and the skills I had acquired. Perhaps because I focused less on my given talents, and more on the things I actually did.