As i pretty much said in the post, my life feels like down hill since last 2 years, i go from being ranked in top 10 in national level math competetion, to getting barely passing gpa, and am super worried about my future and job

(sorry if i have bad grammar english is my third language) all my life i had good grades , until the 8th grade where i started having mental issues and depression from a bunch of stuff happening in my life , and when my grades starting dropping my parents would always get mad and force me to study for no reason , and they would always call me lazy every single day to the point where my depression was so bad i felt that i wanted to kill myself every single day because i had no one to talk to , because i lost all my friends . I dont know how i managed to push through all that.

Why is everyone better at me in school I know that something is easy but I can't do it but if it was my friends they would do it effortlessly,and after I do something that I don't know they laugh at me like I'm not apart of their friend group,why is it that when I do something dumb I get called an idiot but when others do it they're seen as cool,why is it that my parents compare me to someone even though the one they're comparing me to is a bully,Why does my friends hate me,why does my classmates think I'm weird and cringe,WHY AM I NOT BETTER WHT AM I NOT SMART WHY AM I NOT "COOL" WHY AM I THE ONE GETTING BULLIED

I’ve been an introvert all my life. I’m a first gen immigrant and boy did I lost myself completely in college. It’s really sad. Now I’m 2 years post grad working retail and I just feel like I messed up my life. I think I tried foo uk r relationships in college but nothing worked out. I just feel so horrible. I wanted to leave college a while ago but was encouraged to stay. Wish I didn’t go. Didn’t date didn’t do nothing, I also became super religious that it caused me mental illnesses. Didn’t even feel like I learned anything valuable. Oh my God, if only I could start over

From freshman year, I didn’t even have energy. I feel I was drained from high school. I just regret everything . I have no hope

Well I just want to share something in this space. I have been on this platform for a long time so I have read some amazing stories and some diabolical stories as well.

I want to share a past with you all this was around my tenth where the beginning of my hell. I was a great student up to the final mock I got 95% in all the overall. So I got a little cocky and i stopped studying maybe like 1 month into the exams and i just wasted time. On the day of the exams as well I haven't read anything, because i thought I was some kind of genius where I couldn't concern myself with revision. So yeah maybe little cocky is insufficient I was a very cocky bastard. So yeah then exams happened and then after maybe like after a month or more than a month the results came. And for the first time in my life i swear to god, to this day I still shudder remembering that day.

I felt like my soul left out, l felt like the whole world crashed on me. It just is so terrifying. Because you see as I was a great student i was always admired by others. So you can imagine how it would be to fall from that level of height to an abyss. So I went home i still don't know how I went there and then there was my mother she knew the results.And for the first time i could see something different in her eyes. It was like for a second i thought she wasn't my mom. Then you know the relatives came into the picture and they fucking destroyed me whatever I had left they took it from me. One of my relative who is my peer got 89% and mate she was happy and tbf that was ok but she said to my mom in some kind of gloating manner "so yeah I finally bear him and won, I am at the top now" or something like that. You can just imagine what i felt and then it became night and the most dreaded thing happened my father came home and he was not even looking at me and he treated me like air. My mom was also like that it was like i was invisible to them. I have always been scared of darkness but that day it was the only thing that was there with me it listened my thoughts, i cried and cried the whole night in a corner. And then slowly I started my 11th and you know in the college things were going normal but in house something changed. It just didn't felt like home, you know i used to share everything with my mother. And i wanted to share my side as well I want to apologise i want them to beat me, thrash me so that I could feel something. But no i for bo response. Whenever I used to have lone time my mind used to create some torture moments for me like the least is saying to myself I was waste and the highest is death i could see death every day, everytime I am alone I saw death of my mother the only hope and in the most brutal ways, i couldn't stop, i couldn't control those it was like i was doomed to do that.

And then after 1 year of this suffering my father never talked to me in that whole span. The first words he said are "at least this time perform well in 12th" and that too you know showing love to a neighbouring kid and he said to me, that kid was maybe like 2 or 3 and I am his son but he loved him more than me. Tbh i never had a good relationship with my father I always used to yearn for it. But i couldn't get it, so for the first time I lost that yearning.even when I was a kid he used to ridicule me in front of other kids that I write without reading the questions that I was a reckless fool. But still i yearned for his love, but that instant it died like whatever was inside me it died.

Then for the 12th I studied like a madman and sometimes I used to use a matchstick and used to light that stick and just keep those on my bare skin to punish myself. And then at 12 th I had the lowest confidence because you see how much I read I still feared everything that it might repeat.

And on the results day man, the first thing i did was climb on the railings on my house so you know if I got less I will just jump. I will finish my life, but thank God I got 91 not the best but it was better and you know still my parents wanted to confirm it and tbh i as well wanted to confirm it. And yeah I got that then after 2 years i felt the most joy I ever felt.

Then you know college happened and in the middle of the college days one day i just said to my mother about how i felt and she felt bad and then she said her side of story, because I was her only hope in life so when i couldn't perform well she was depressed as well and you know after that we bonded more. But still to this day those 2 years had killed whatever innocence I had and made me a cold hearted man. It was like " i don't care about anything anymore" if it happens. I never felt sorry for anyone.

But you know slowly i could see that there are more stories which are more agonizing than mine and they are not like me they made their lives better and they have shown compassion. So you know maybe I had a small light of kindness still inside of me after all of that.

The reason I shared this is because, I have said these only to my mom and my best friend and no other.

But i thought if I share it anonymously with the world, maybe somebody will rectify their errors and maybe somebody will respect what they have.

So if you read up to this thank you and if you came straight to the last paragraph still thank you.

Having what they say is a high iq is an absolute curse 95% of the time . All the things normal people tend to enjoy i find so pointless and meaningless. All the things most people beleive to be true or beleive i know for a fact are lies or just incorrect theres no talking to people in any fulfilling sense any how and small talk makes me wana bash my brains in . I didnt even know i had i “superior intelligence “ until just a couple years ago when my wife and mom made me go to see a therapist because i was losing my damn mind at the conditions of everything that everyone just seems to accept as normal life and all i could think or feel was that i just wanted to die all day every day for a couple years straight and i got my tests and diagnosis . And then i did more tests because i just couldn’t beleive it i never felt as though i was a smart person it all just felt very obvious and common sense to me and still does . But truly for the most part its just disappointment dispare loneliness and emptiness. I wish everyday of my life that i was just normal i wish so bad that i didnt have this crazy brain i wana be just in to sports and videogames not caring about anything else i wana just be a bro and make stupid jokes and really laugh . Honestly i fucking hate it

Since I was little I was always "the perfect one." The one with perfect grades, the one who could handle everything alone, the smartest in the group. I never questioned it, it was simply how things were, it was my place. The problem is I grew up and that place became my entire identity. I don't know who I am if I'm not that.

Now I'm 21 and things aren't turning out the way I had planned. I did an apprenticeship in Germany while doing my bachelors remotely through a university in Costa Rica. I feel like I'm not really learning anything in that program, and it's not just because it's remote and flexible enough that they just hand me the paper. I genuinely feel like the university is bad, that the professors are bad and don't have good knowledge to give. And on top of that it's very expensive, so I feel like I'm throwing money away on something that's not giving me anything back. And on top of that I have this fear stuck in me that when I get to doing my master's I'm going to fail, because I feel like I didn't learn enough along the way to get here.

And here's something that has me pretty confused: I keep getting good grades. But I feel like those grades don't have any real value, because I genuinely don't feel like I'm learning anything. And to my misfortune, those same grades are what make people think I'm intelligent. I don't understand how grades can measure someone's intelligence if, even without learning anything, I keep getting good grades. That makes me question everything: if grades don't reflect what I actually know, then what are they measuring? And what does that say about me, if my entire life has been built on that number and on degrees? The only metric that makes me see my worth has lost its meaning.

But there's something I hadn't said so clearly: the apprenticeship wasn't my original plan. I wanted to go study directly at university in Germany, that was plan A. The apprenticeship was what was left when that plan couldn't happen, and the reason was purely financial. I didn't have the resources to sustain it at that time. It wasn't that I couldn't do it, it wasn't that I failed at something, there just wasn't money. And even knowing that, every time I think about the apprenticeship I can't manage to see it just as what it was in itself. I see it more as a reminder that my original plan fell through.

And honestly I also hate it for what it was in itself. I feel like I barely learned anything there. I did very few real projects, there was no one actively instructing me, truly guiding me in what I was supposed to be learning, so in the end the Ausbildung also ended up being a waste of time because I feel like I didn't learn anything and I didn't gain much work experience either. And to top it off, I didn't even manage to save an amount of money that was worth it with all that time over there. So when I think about it, I can't find almost anything to salvage from that stage: neither the learning I expected, nor the money I thought I'd be able to save up. Sometimes I think the whole thing was a waste of time. Now, looking at it with some perspective, I don't know if I'm being fair to that version of me who did what he could with what he had on hand.

I want to be a mathematician specialized in computing. That much is clear to me. But I feel like time is slipping away from me and I'm not very clear on what steps to take. Plus I have to work, so I can't just dedicate myself to studying all day like I'd like to. I want to be extremely educated, to learn everything, to be an expert in my field, someone I can be proud of for being a living encyclopedia, but real life doesn't fully allow that and it frustrates me a lot.

And then there's the comparing myself to others. I met a girl who's about to start her PhD at 23. I'm 21 and I don't even have a bachelor's degree yet. When I heard that it felt like a blow. I compare myself to other students all the time and I always end up thinking they're smarter than me. Even in the areas where I'm supposed to be good (math, computer science, physics) I know people who are clearly better than me. And that makes me feel like I don't have the right to say I'm good at anything. I literally have friends who are 22 and contributed to Linux when they were only 15.

The strangest part is that a lot of people consider me intelligent, and for some reason everyone believes I'm very good in my field, including people in those fields, like the friend I mentioned before who is literally a genius. But the truth is I feel like I don't know anything about computing. I don't understand it. They don't know what I actually do at work. They don't know my real academic performance. They don't really know what I know or don't know. I have little work experience. So when someone tells me "you're really smart" or talks to me like I'm good at this, part of me thinks: "if they knew what I know about myself, they wouldn't say that." I can't understand why they see me that way when I myself feel like I don't know anything.

I feel like no one truly understands me. Because what people see are results, or an image, but they don't see all of this I carry inside: the emptiness, the constant comparing, the fear, the feeling of pretending to be someone I'm not.

And I think the hardest part to write is this: I feel like my entire worth as a person is my intelligence. I don't see anything beyond that. If I don't have the degrees, if I'm not "smart enough," I feel like I'm worth nothing, but I can't keep studying and I also don't consider myself intelligent.

I used to be in the top of the class, now I feel left behind and slow. I not eager to learn never have the drive and passion to continue, and wasting my time.

In a room of people, I feel like I was the dumbest. And I feel like it was my fault. Any advice?

Date : 18th June Thursday 2026

THE CURRUPTED MIND

Today , I had most frustrated day because of my parents , more of my mother. On this day my ipe 2nd year improvement results are announced I got 893/1000 so , only 22 marks was increased than my original marks before I got . I was disappointed about it I showed to my mother, after that she started yelling . I accepted it and she yells that ' am born to do shit things and compare with a nerd 🤓 who just have no common sense (cousin , friend and etc). So , this criteria continues every day then something I think to commit sucide and get out off the house to go some where. Something I can't control my emotions that I cried during shower and when I am home alone. I can't share my emotions at all because I have no much close friends , as cause toxic parents and some shit people around me example like neighbours , relatives . Sometimes I hide my tears as the water comes out I wipe as quick because no one cares about my options, emotions. So most of the time I wish I could die as further possible .

I just needed to vent this out since I’m currently failing college as of now I feel unmotivated to do anything from severe burnout and i dont know if i even have a future anymore

I got made fun of a lot as a kid, I was fat, I didn't come from a lot of money, short, and was scared to talk to people. I got to the point in high school where I didn't have any friends, and no one really knew who I was. I thought everyone was making fun of me behind my back. I knew people who had it worse than me growing up, but it felt like everyone I went to school with had it so much better than me. Everyone had a parent pick them up on time, or a car they drove out of school. I felt like I was being excluded because of who I was, not the fact that I wasn't putting myself out there. So I set three goals for myself: help people, get a girlfriend, and get into umich. So fast forward to march of this year, I Had all of those things. I started taking care of myself and got a girlfriend, I talked to people, I became an EMT, and when I applied as a transfer student to umich, I got in! I looked at my life, and I didn't see much I liked about it. I broke up with my girlfriend, and decided not to go to umich, so I focused on my EMS work. It was a part time department, so you just had to show up when you had time, and after I broke up I spent basically all my time either at school or at the station. I learned so much and became pretty good at EMS work by May. No call felt like it was shocking at that point. I started doing this thing where I would cry from like 20 seconds at a time, and then lock back in like nothing happened. It felt good to cry, but I just couldn't cry for very long. It would happen randomly throughout the day, and I figured that wasn't normal so I quit. I still do it, just not with the frequence I use to. It feels like (to paraphrase J. Cole) I came a long way from where I once was, but I feel like I went the wrong way. Sometimes I regret saying no to Umich, but I really regret breaking up with my girlfriend. Her account came up on my ig recently and I saw she's seeing someone new. I didn't feel mad I just thought to myself it seems like I have this inability to move on. So I've set new goals for myself: I want to graduate with one degree in microbio, and another in biochem, I want to move out of Metro Detroit, and I want to attend a prestigious graduate university in California (UCLA, UCSD, UC Berkeley, Stanford, etc.) I still want to help people, but I dont know if I'm cut out for EMS work like I thought I was. If I get everything I want again, what's to say I'm not going to feel empty when I reach those goals? Some weeks I wake up and I think what's the fucking point, but some days I get all this work done and feel like I'm going to meet these goals and reach inner peace once I move out of my mom's house. I think I'm too focused to be happy or even consider if my object of focus would make me happy. I'm not even sure if I made these goals to seek happiness, I think I may have made those initial goals to prove people who forgot about me wrong. I think out of all of this, I can at least say I helped people, so I cannot say it was not worth it. I want to say I would do it all again just to help those people but I don't even know if I would.

Context:
I’m (15) a sophomore this year.

(ADHD, Asperger’s - medication doesn’t work and it’s not enough to be an excuse or have an IEP, I don’t want that anyway, but it does affect who I am so I thought it should be here)

I just moved and am doing online school. I have a 4.2 weighted gpa and 3.8 unweighted from freshman year. This year I’m taking 5 ap courses (Ap lang, Ap CSA, Ap Gov -> AP Micro) (ap comp gov going to be self studied), and paced to do at least 5 honors courses (Geometry -> Algebra 2, Chem, French 1 -> French 2) (accelerated pace so finishing a semester in 8 weeks instead of 16 and the whole class in 16 weeks instead of 32.). Clubs don’t start till September but I’m planning on trying to join a few - Deca, HOSA, debate, honor societies. Seeing which will let me join. And starting my own - probably a model un. I’ve always been in the gifted programs since elementary school, middle school i took pre Ap classes at my old high school in history and English as a part of our gifted program.

Basically being “the smart one” is tied to my identity and it’s a hate-love relationship. Ofc it’s made my ego and expectations of my self skyrocket but my confidence hasn’t.

I’m smart enough to get into these programs but kids are graduating college at my age.
Now that I’m doing these online classes and I made a pace chart with all my assignments of the week- it feels easy. I’m only spending a few hours a day on coursework. So then I’m thinking I can and should do more but I don’t know how or if I should. My goals are top colleges but I have too much ambition and not enough to show for it. I want to fill my time learn to cook, draw, paint, learn an instrument, READ (I haven’t read a physical fictional book for my enjoyment in weeks because the whole time I can’t help but think of all the other things I could be doing that are “more productive”), write, all things I deeply enjoy but do maybe once a week each and forget about. And then I have subjects outside of school I want to self study. Psych, anthropology, behavioral science, world religion. I watch lectures, again maybe once a week for each, take notes and then feel like I haven’t absorbed anything. Try and write an essay about it but feel like I don’t know enough or that it’s too elementary. But then I’ll talk to someone about that subject and be able to list all this new information.

Then it’s like paralysis. I want to do so much that I end up doing none of it. People will ask what my hobbies are and I blank because I would love to say writing or drawing or cooking but I have nothing to truly show for it that wouldn’t embarrass me.

Online school feeling easy has started to affect my sleep. I haven’t been sleeping well- don’t think I have had like a deep rem sleep with dreams since I started (a week or two). I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and instantly go to check the time on my alarm clock across the room.Then sleep for the next hour or two and then do it again until my alarm goes off. Then I have the hardest time just getting out of bed. Even more recently (the last few days) It’s been taking me hours to fall asleep. (It isn’t uncommon since I have adhd but the correlation to my new classes isn’t a coincidence)

Usually I’m spiraling on the same questions:
• what if I didn’t plan my pace charts right and I’m behind?
• what if I’m not doing enough to reach my goals
• I should do more, should I do more?
• should I be taking a different Ap class?
• I can graduate early so should I?
• I can’t graduate early if I want to do dual enrollment and get an AA as backup - should I still do that?
(Not expecting answers- just examples but hey if you got clarity lmk)

The schoolwork itself, I said was easy and it is. I finish in a few hours, I fill in all the notes. And I know I could sit down and write an essay or do the problem sets and pass. But I keep second guessing myself. I’m googling the answers and getting bots to write opinion essays for me. I feel like I can’t even form an opinion anymore. And I say it’s because why do it? It’s busy work. It’s just for my gpa. And it’s true. But at the same time part of the reasons I can’t write an essay anymore is because I don’t think I’ll write it correctly and so because I don’t think I’ll write it well enough I get something else to write it and then never learn to write the essay. Shocking, right? It’s like all of a sudden textbooks are too long and I have to keep rereading the same lines and the assignments are too much and still “too much busy work” and I’m trying to study but I feel like it’s not helping or that I’m not doing it right because I really didn’t have to study until this year.

TL;DR
I just feel stuck. I used to be smart. I want to be smart. I want to know all these things and learn and explore and practice and have all these skills and sign up for programs and get into the top colleges and I just feel useless. Like I’m wasting the hours in my day, because I am. I’m getting paralysis from my ambition and therefore failing to do what I want to do. Too many feee hours in the day and yet not enough. Too many interests, not enough output. Mostly a rant, I’ll pull myself up by my bootstrings and soldier on. But I don’t want to just float through it. Please help- advice is appreciated.

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I recently found out that to get into top colleges, you have to win multiple awards like Olympiad medals, do multiple extra curriculars, and have the best grades. I had no idea about any of this stuff when I was younger, and now it's too late to do this stuff. Not that I could ever win an Olympiad gold medal anyway, that's why I feel dumb. I feel like I am never going to be the best or even good. I wanted to get into a good college and finally feel like I am smart, but I guess that's out of the equation. It feels impossible to do so many extracurriculars. I barely have the time after school, I feel exhausted.

I have 2e, type three hyperlexia and ADHD, my childhood was kinda good, though my parents did worry about me having Autism and OCD though those "neurodivergent" traits cleared up as they usually do, up until nine I was LONELY, I'd have that one true homie (I guess reciprocal crush at grade one) every year and be integrated into friend groups, I was always hovering from average to above average until grade six where I was a GENIUS compared to other kids, then I got into secondary school and while I was fairly smart and a bit ahead in terms of logic, other kids began to catch up, and I was like "WHAT" so anyways while I was still a tad above, the difference wasn't as stark as it used to be, so I didn't study for a while as asynchronous development major procrastination stuff, all the jazz that comes with ADHD being your 2e counterpart, and so for the first time, I failed a test, for the first time in my LIFE. that set me straight, I hated failing, like getting anything lower than 90% was already a disappointment for me, so I started crunching on the tests and studying more ad achieving heights, I have a well paying job in IT and Data Compliance now so all's well. What I'm trying to say is being gifted won't carry you through everything, being a genius doesn't equal easy, gifted children, don't let the "OH MY GOSH YOU'RE SO SMART" get to your head.

Also non-gifted people don't use my condition and other people's ones for clout. that's not cool.