There are quite a few people that are much younger than me here.
I figured I'd come clean before leaving again. I usually do that to make myself feel ashamed enough that I don't feel any need to come back here for a few months to a year.
Anyway... I was kind of a mess as a kid. I was diagnosed with a learning disability, dyslexia, ADHD, and tourette's syndrome. Lol, yes, that's the mental condition where you have "ticks" that you can't help (for me it was closing my eyes and licking my lips all the time). Fuck, it makes me cringe even as I type it.
Despite the recommendations by my school to go to a special class (mostly due to learning problems), my parents figured that I can probably make it in normal class. So I went to school, but I was so ashamed of my diagnosis that I didn't ever mention it to anyone. I was at one point called "gear changer" or something like that because I was flinging my head around like an idiot all day (another tick). LOL. Most people didn't figure out I had a condition though because they were kids and had shit-for-brain.
Anyway, when I was around 13, I decided that I wouldn't be a retard anymore. So I stopped licking my lips, fake coughing like a moron, and flinging my head around like a gear changer. And then I didn't do that anymore.
Afterwards, I became 100% convinced that mental illnesses are BS and just made-up. I was still shitty in school, which more or less reflected my other diagnoses which were a learning disability ADD and dyslexia. Except that I didn't believe any of that. I had a decent group of friends who were kind of nerdy, but I had (understandably) zero success with the ladies, who thought I was a weird creep. Not that it bothered me at the time because I was also full-blown Christian who believed in chastity, soul mates, and true love. I also believed I was the Messiah. I guess I still do.
Up to this point, I wanted to be zorro (the guy that steals from the poor and gives to the rich, or the other way around I don't remember), fireman, policeman, armyman, or man-man. However, when I got to my teenage years, I figured that none of those are really realistic for me. Instead, I decided that I wanted to become either a chef or a lawyer.
Cooking and doing stuff with my hands was really fulfilling for me. I really enjoyed our cooking classes in school, because I got to eat good stuff, enjoy life, be social, and so on. However, lawyers make shit-ton of money and are respected, so I decided to become a lawyer and go to high school instead of vocational school.
The problem was that my grades were really bad. I was barely passing most of my classes, whereas I wanted to go to a good high-school and become the best lawyer in the world. So I decided to study, and then I had more or less all A's.
I went to high school, and I got again more or less all A's. Meanwhile, the educators there tested me for dyslexia, which I never mentioned I had, and recommended I be given more time for the exams and have special classes, which I refused. Dyslexia basically means you suck at reading so you should be given an unfair advantage over other people. It's like if you sucked at maths and they gave you an easier maths test because you have the suck-math condition, which is diagnosed when you suck at maths.
I went to my first law class, realized that it was really boring and that I never want to become a lawyer, and so I switched to science, There, I became obsessed with a lot of stuff. I basically wanted to become the Albert Einstein of my era (which to be honest I still do). So while my teacher was explaining how, when he fucks his wife, the room temperature rises, my mind was way off the topic of thermodynamics and I was deeply entrenched in the idea of quantum mechanics.
Throughout my high-school, I had a few nerd friends and I spent most of my time in isolation (where I mostly either jerked off to images of all the hot girls in my class or no-life trolled on the Internet), but I graduated with among the highest grades in the school and had already started a few amateur research projects and related hobbies.
Meanwhile, even before going to University, I had started having issues with my mom. She started to dislike me for some reason throughout my high-school, maybe because I was a spoiled brat who spent his time trolling on the Internet and creating fake personas. By the time I got to University she pretty much hated me. So she kicked me out and I had to go find an apartment and make my own money. My dog, who was my only real friend, died around that time as well.
Besides crippling depression and suicidal thoughts, and the occasional two-three week starvation when I ran out of money (I swore I wouldn't ask my parents or anyone else for help) I did pretty ok in university. I had a GPA of 4.0, and I started research end of my first year, which resulted in a few publications, which was pretty nice for a dyslexic retard with learning problems.
However, I was completely isolated from most people. Luckily, I met one French-Swedish couple who was very much like me in terms of interests and quirks. However, they were extremely extroverted and social, whereas I was a shy outcast who was afraid of speaking or anything that might lead to me being embarrassed.
So, I decided that I will become social too. I went out and started talking more. But because I never did that, and I didn't have anything to say, I mostly just stared at people and made weird sounds until they felt really uncomfortable. I remember this one time at the gym, this was around my uni times, when there was this girl that I really, really liked, because she was hot. I was wearing my sweatpants, trying to think of things to say, and all I got was a raging boner that showed up through the sweatpants and scared her off. Probably my top 10 most embarrassing moments.
Then I looked at these youtube videos and read books on PUA tactics. I'm not kidding, lol, I really did that.
One thing that I managed to overcome over time was my sense of embarrassment. After a few months, I had no issues talking with anyone and holding up conversations. I got over my lack of eye contact by literally, uncomfortably staring at everyone I interacted with.
I would say that I got quite good at it, to the point that I was constructing fake personas similarly to how I had done on the Internet. I had elaborate background stories, and different personas, and I tried to get to know people on a deep level, and find ways to get them to like me.
However, I think it hit me later on that none of that was really good for my overall mental health. While people did like me, they didn't like me. I knew what I had to say, or how to act, to get people to like me. But I was still rotten on the inside. The moment they knew who I actually was, they wouldn't like me. So I wrote a lot of cringy stuff about intrinsic self-worth as a way to cope with my lack of it.
What I realized is that if I want people to like me, they actually need to like who I am. That means that I need to genuinely become a better person, not just pretend to be one.
I moved countries, and decided that I will be the best person I can be. I started dating, and my first date was awkward as fuck, as was the first time I got laid. I was dating this French girl who had notions of all the romantic cliches (we would watch random passengers to decide, look at the stars, and so on). She also wanted to have sex all the time. I remember thinking, when losing my virginity, "THIS is it? Wow, I really haven't missed out."
I kept dating a few girls, before meeting my wife, whom I won't write about here. I finished my PhD in two years, which included dumping one poor supervisor who stopped talking to me for some reason. Then I went for postdoc, and was lucky enough to get a faculty position right after. The last thing I've learned is that dressing up helps when you're considered young.
Bye.
