With Robin Williams committing suicide and the various analyses done of him since, I've found a lot of parallels between he and me, though of course we're still very different. However, it seems he grew up in a household where his mother didn't really connect with him at all or seem to care about him, and he used comedy with her to foster SOME sort of positive relationship. His father was mostly absent, and it doesn't sound like he was every close with his father either. He would play alone all day long most of the time because he had no other options. He never made this a huge deal, but he mentioned it here and there over the years. It seems like he ended up creating this funny character to connect with people, but almost no one really knew the real Robin, and I think this was probably a big part of his depression.
I can empathize with Robin because I do exactly the same thing, even with my parents. I am a "weird" person by most people's standards and have learned that being myself is not a strategy for happiness 99% of the time. I'm not socially awkward or a freak or anything; I just have very different interests than most people and have a hard time relating to most people and what their concerned about in life. I often feel like no one knows the real me except for a few best friends over the years and maybe one girlfriend I had, and none of them live within several hundred miles now. That's not a big deal, but what does bother me into adulthood is that no one in my family has any understanding of who I am, not because I've hidden it from them but because they don't try to understand and aren't interested. My parents saw my oddness as inherently "bad" and treated me as such from the age of about 14 onward. Introvertedness was "bad," reading was "bad," being passionate about running was "bad," wanting to see the world was "bad," caring more about changing the world than earning lots of money was "bad," etc. They were pretty explicit about these feelings for a long time until I got out on my own and basically cut off communication with them. They came around a little since then, and we talk often, but they still don't accept me for who I am or try to understand my personality or motivation or anything. They're completely uninterested in anything about me other than "how are you doing at the moment." My siblings aren't any better, but I don't really expect them to care I guess. I feel like an alien in my own family. It bothers me.
I figured people just got over these things eventually, and though I mostly have, I see people like Robin Williams and it reminds me that not everyone does, and that I might still be having feelings of resentment and frustration with my parents even 20 years from now. How does one actually deal with this stuff and get over it?