I mean I have a good job now, yea. I work on Wall Street and I’m upper middle class. But I’m not wealthy, and I never will be.

I’m also a single mother with an abusive ex-husband that still makes our lives hell years, even though I left when our son was a newborn. That was directly because of my father. My ex even vaguely reminded me of my father on our first date, although i didn’t realize that until later. Even in my early 30s when i met him, i had very little dating experience, and my only model was my abusive, extreme father. I left him when I had the baby, because I didn’t want my child to experience that. But still, that never would have happened had I been allowed to develop normally and learn about men and dating and relationships.

I also threw away all my hard work. I started working, and by 24, I had been working for years and was in a very prestigious organization, but I felt that emptiness you feel when something has been your entire identity all your life and you realize it doesn’t mean anything. So I literally quit and dropped out of society and became a severe addict for 3 or 4 years. Up to then, I had never used drugs and didn’t drink much. That whole thing never would have happened if i took a normal path and was allowed to develop my own identity.

My sisters had a much more normal path, and they are married to millionaires and have high-paying careers and very nice families and have much better lives than I do. My friends from grad school and my early 20s are all married to millionaires, have good careers and nice families, and much better lives than I do. They all took a normal path. There’s no question I would be doing a lot better had I just had a normal life. My sisters had the same abusive, dysfunctional parents that I did, and they also grew up in poverty, but they were allowed to develop normally and have a childhood and adolescence. That’s really important.

Child prodigies actually have a really high rate of addiction and suicide, and female prodigies end up in abusive relationships, and that’s why.

It is what it is. I focus on my son now. I don’t date and I just work and parent. I don’t have any community, and it’s hard for me to relate to most people. When I see my son, I think about myself at that age and it’s unbelievable to me how someone could take a smart, pretty, bubbly kid and do that to them and just destroy all their potential. But my father had severe emotional issues that he lived out through me, as all these parents of child prodigies do. It’s a form of abuse common with narcissists.