I want to share my story mostly to vent but also in case anyone here has had a similar experience.
I've lived with untreated nerve damage going 30 years now. To this day I have yet to get a proper diagnosis, but I know for a fact that I've had nerve damage since I was 6 months old. As you can imagine, this has made my life hell. Particularly because for a larger part of my life I was unaware that I have some kind of nerve damage. As a child, bringing attention to the disturbingly veiny scar on my right foot would typically result in something to the effect of "Suck it up". This scar resulted from corrective surgery in the 90s for clubfoot. As a kid this didn't seem to be a problem since I was pretty joyous. Though it's worth noting I cried excessively as a baby. Teen years I was extremely depressed. As I understand it, I basically had to internalize the damage I was unaware of as if it was just a part of my personality. I always knew something was off but could never pinpoint it.
Early 20s I got an Existing Prior To Service General Discharge from the US Army due to the fact my right ankle is deformed. I didn't know this until then. After this I lucked out with a very affordable apartment and basically became independent with what I got paid for during bootcamp. I've had a few jobs before the whole army thing, but those were lower stakes jobs as they were intended for adolescents. When it came to jobs after the army, I actually always did very well in most jobs, with two or three exceptions. The problem was that I could never keep jobs long enough because the pressure would get to me. And it has always affected me intensely. I feel more intensely due to the hypersensitivity, the at-times overwhelming discomfort, and the pain from standing for longer than 5 minutes due to leg discrepancy. Anyway I struggled to keep that apartment. It was my biggest goal. I was studying in college and managing to afford the apartment with the pell grant. However, in the 2020s... I could no longer afford it so began taking jobs and this ultimately lead to failing at both college and jobs until I lost the apartment. It wasn't until september of 2025 that I finally started piecing things together, and with the aid of A.I., I've found that I've had some kind of nerve damage all along. Needless to say, the symptoms from this have exacerbated with time. I would always get the electric and tingling sensations, but now the twitching has gotten worse. I know at this point its likely permanent. It's been unrecognized and neglected for too long. I've only now began the slow process of healthcare for the broke. My life has been uphill, and often a wall. I know many others have suffered similar and worse things than I. The fact that it's invisible to others is perhaps the most crushing part of it all.
EDIT: Date correction. Grammar.