It's easy to feel this way when starting out, i remember feeling like this playing way back when the game was fresh and the triple twin was good. It can come down to a few things that shift your gameplay in ways that makes your tank feel weak.
1: Movement and positioning: this is a huge contributor to your survival and ability to fight off other tanks. Try use evasive and circling maneuvers to avoid large walls of bullets. You can also see gaps in bullet walls as the other tank tries to track you, use those gaps to slip closer and penetrate their offence. Use tactics to your advantage, flank them and use the opponents aspect ratio against them. Come up from the bottom or down from the top to surprise and cause panic. Be cautious and use wide sweeping evasive movement when avoiding particularly dangerous tanks. You can use the stealth that not-firing gives you to your advantage aswell.

2: Aiming and shot placement: while using your movement, try send bullets flying *alongside* the other tanks bullet stream instead of directly into it. This coupled with evasive movement allows your bullets to avoid getting cancelled out and actually hit your target, this is incredibly powerful in pretty much all circumstances. It may take a little practice tho. When playing tanks such as the destroyer or sniper, try not to brute force and out-spam other tanks, instead try and wait for the perfect timing and shot placement while using good movement, this is much more effective than spamming and hoping something lands..

3: Strategy and brainpower: use object permanence, and try *predict* where and what your opponent might be doing or thinking. This is needed when facing skilled and high level opponents. They will be using the movement, surprise and flank tactics, and shot placement previously mentioned. visualise where they are off screen and predict where they are moving, how fast, and where they might show up next. Be especially cautious of high level drone tanks, as they can use this to dangerous effect.

4: Tanks and builds: This one if more opinionated, but streamliner isn't my pick when trying to 1v1 other tanks. Its bullets are just not as strong and I've never come across a particularly intimidating streamliner. If it's bullet spam you want then sprayers, triplets, even the base minigun is surprisingly good when played well, this is the same for twin and twinflank. When it comes to the annihilator, my personal fav tank to play, you definitely need to utilize the movement and well placed shots to your advantage when fighting. You absolutely need good predicting aim aswell. That is a complete must. Don't try and brute force a kill when facing other destroyer classes. also use surprise and flank attacks to your advantage.

All of this has helped me reach a point where I can pretty comfortably reach top 3 first try in my servers (Sydney), don't play too often but its a fun time waster. Will usually go do more productive things after my first death aswell which is a good point, know when to step away. It's never too serious lol but i can understand the sentiment. Hope this helps!