did anyone else experience being "the smart kid" and paradoxically never being trusted to make their own decisions about what they want to do, then growing up into an adult who defensively avoids expressing joy about their own work, lest it be taken as some kind of weird threat

my dad has refused to speak to me since my early 20s, because i told him to go fuck himself when he said i should quit the $60k dev job i'd just landed, move back in with them, and finish a degree at a local community college

i can't really summarize it any better than that. i felt i was being pretty successful and their response, even in adulthood, was essentially: well that's fucking stupid. you should abandon everything you have and come do the thing we said you should do

this must sound goofy as hell to anyone who didn't go through similar, but man, it kinda fucks you up to have everyone in your life treat you like you are nothing more than "smart kid" and then ignore or outright condemn the personal ways you found to express that

wow this is getting way too many likes. here's a thought: what if we /didn't/ emotionally torture our clever (and, let's be honest, probably high-functioning autistic) children? just throwing that out there