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Elphanigh's description captured very much my experience too. So, Kat, you are not alone in being the highly functioning student at school. In Pete Walker's book, he talked about how much safer he felt in the army than with his family. In the army, there were clear rules. You follow them, you get rewarded. You transgress them, you get punished, while at home, there are hidden landmines everywhere. That really describes very well what I felt at school. I was a good student, followed the rules, kind to my fellow students, did real well in exams and extra-curricular activities. I was loved by my teachers and fellow students. I had much happier school memories than many of my friends who had more loving families than mine.

Also, the idea to become the best and get into the best college became a hope for me during those late teenage years. I chose to believe that once I've given my mum what she wanted from me - best of the best - then we are even and I would be free to live my life. Problems started when I actually did get into the best college, and they continued when I tried to get a job and enter into the "real world". There, it's no longer enough to obey rules, listen to the teacher, know how to study for exams. People want boldness, creativity and confidence from their top students or candidates for their competitive jobs. Well, after spending years developing skills to be very sensitive to what other people what from me, and being polite and obedient, I had no idea what I would want to create nor did I have a single shred of true confidence left.

I can so relate to this. Growing up in a family where achievement was everything, I forced myself to bring home straight A's at any and all costs, so that I would not have to face the wrath and shame that my parents would deal to me otherwise. I pulled all nighters starting in middle school all the way into graduate school in order to deliver exceptional reports and to excel at tests. I didn't have time for friends, it was not encouraged, and I didn't enjoy that interaction because fun was portrayed to me as a sin. I didn't have time for my own interests, it was also not encouraged unless it was something impressive I could include on my transcript.

So to appease my parents, because otherwise I would be kicked out of the family, I worked myself to the bone to study something I wasn't naturally interested in and something I wasn't naturally good at. I graduated from a top university only to find out as Arale said, the real world has no closed system like in the classroom where there's a single authority figure, planned tests, planned preparation time, and an objective ranking system. Because the job market is so open-ended, those who have confidence, initiative, and resilience (all the emotional skills that were crushed by my parents) tend to have the most success.

Now I'm still in this field that was not my choosing, and wish so hard that I had listened to my true self back then. I know being a minor, it probably wouldn't have been possible, but then that just makes me more angry that I was born to these parents.