#giftedkid

(Now including drawn picture also made by me ( ´•̥̥̥ω•̥̥̥` ))

Me trying to write stories ROMAN SANDERS EDITION

1193 words and counting. Trigger-Warning slight alluding to self-harm +negative thoughts.

That wasn’t that bad Roman tried to convince himself. He’d been through way worse right . . .? Wait was that considered a good thing. He brought his hands to his head. It had begun agonizingly pounding earlier in the day and he could feel the pressure in his ears akin to something like a buzzing sound had begun making its presence known. He felt sluggish and lethargicness crept upon him. Surely they hadn’t meant it that way. Not like their intend was hurting him. So why did he feel so . . so hurt. It was like a piece inside of him was broken off. The piece that carried all his confidence. His admittedly now feeling false bravery. The bravado that helped him conquer his less then awesome feelings. He heard creaking footsteps up the stairs and some soft whispered goodnights.

The mind palace fell empty on sound as its residents started heading to their respective beds. I should probably get some shut eye too thought Roman as he looked around his room. He hadn’t had the time or to be honest motivation to clean it up for a while now. His energy seemed to have wounded down a lot lately. He would put it down to the amount of videos they had been making. But truthfully he wasn’t very much present in them at all let alone having his ideas represented as anything less than annoying. He twirled his messy hair in between his fingers, twiddling his thumbs while rocking back and forth a bit. The silence that now protruded the vacant mind surroundings made the whining in his ears stand out all the more. He grabbed his temple and began rubbing circles on his forehead. He didn’t want things to be this way. It all felt so complicated. And like his incompetence was already making everybody uncomfortable enough. Without highlighting all his other flaws. Normally he loved the spotlight but now it made him itch.

The thought alone made him have trouble breathing. He should be more put together. How could he dream of having a grand live on the stage if he couldn’t even stand a meager spotlight. He felt woozy had his room always been this of kilter, this . . dizzying. His vision blurred had he been crying this whole time. How long . . . he tried wiping away his tears as new ones grew in their places. The clock face on his nightstand was barely legible through mist his eyes produced. It read 02:10 AM. Had he really been rummaging through his hair and been sat thinking here for this long. SHIT- Logan had a schedule he wanted to keep and he didn’t want to be tired and late for the morning meetings. Ouch . . .his head stung if it wasn’t for him feeling immobile he would have moved to pick up some painkillers for his worsening headache. Then again he didn’t wanna wake up the others by making too much sound going to find it in the cabinets below. He’d been warned before about being too noisy and off-putting when trying to practice his favorite musical songs. Keep it down Logan had yelled. Yeah will you can it with your sappy bullshit his mustachy brother had added. He’d tried whisper singing ever since. It didn’t have that much flare to it, but if it made them happier he’d be glad to be of their backs.

The inside of his head felt as if someone had knocked his brain around quite a few times. Cut all its supports out and the remaining short-circuiting heap had been set on fire as some sort of twisted fun added bonus. He sniffled rubbing the underside of his nose and eye sockets. He probably deserved it. The way he’d been performing lately was about as garbage as he felt. The clock face blinked 03:00 AM it read. No, no NO . . . this had to stop. He wasn’t even supposed to stay up again. He was exhausted it took longer than he wanted to admit to come up with his sup-par ideas as it was. He didn’t need to create more problems for himself and everyone around him. He slammed down his fist against his carpet and then recoiled in shock as he remembered he shouldn’t produce sounds this late into the night. Frustrated he dug his nails into his palm and bit on his knuckles as he closed his arms around himself. His knees seemed to tremble a bit, he noticed as he looked down. Was this the self-soothing Virgil had talked about. It didn’t seem that soothing to him.

He looked at his fingers they were cold and absent of colour apart from the stained ink and the numerous papercuts on them. He’d really been trying. It might have looked easy from the outside but ‘’It was all a Ruse’’. As Deceit would so say. More and more often he felt that it was all just too much and that balancing it was getting more impossible as it became harder to smile to himself in the mirror. What had been the last time he’d truly felt accomplished. Like he got his stuff together or at least made it look presentable enough to fool everyone. His heavy eyelids started to droop over his glossy dry red tear stained eyes until they shot up to look at his calendar.

Crap.

He’d forgot. He was so busy being fucking sorry for himself that he’d missed the big red circled due date of the upcoming script. If something had to pull him over the edge this was it he’d reached his limits. And felt surrounded. He started drawing panicked breaths heaving over on himself. He didn’t know what pounded harder his head or his chest. They were gonna be so mad at him or worse they'd be staring on in drooping disappointment as he would stand there ashamed in the corner , uneasy shuffling his feet. Patton would throw out a halfhearted it’s okay kiddo. With Thomas sighing looking away as Logan crumpled his paper up and muttered something about no respect for a proper schedule in the background, again having to adjust each and every detail in his already busily packed important planning scheme. If this was only a mild version of a so called panic attack that he’d had explained to him by Virgil. He couldn’t imagine what a full blown one must have actually felt like. He felt so sorry for the dude. How could he ever manage to put on any sense of composure if he had to have these on an at least a monthly basis. the walls felt like the were eerily closing in on him. He wanted to scream to cry out for help but only a meekly weak sob would be forced out of his throat that as the shadows in the corners of his narrowed eyes started to crop up and he lost his already faltering vision to the black surrounding his corneas. His body sunk to the ground like a melted puddle.

The expectations are  sometimes hard to bear, but the lack of them makes you spiral into the void of nothingness.

You know you’re smart but you don’t know if you care enough or care too much or care at all, because there is no boundaries. 

It’s either success or a stab in the chest.

Feeling like a failure even when you don’t actually fail. Only the third place is not as good as winning the competition.

Nobody cares as much as you would like. Nobody ever will.

“The only way out is through.

Humble and strong people don’t have the same trouble with these troubles that egotists do. There’re fewer complaints and far less self-immolation. Instead there’s stoic—even cheerful— resilience. Pity isn’t necessary. Their identity isn’t threatened. They can get by without constant validation.

This is what we’re aspiring to— much more than mere success. What matters is hat we can respond to what life throws at us.

And how we make it through.”

—Ego is the Enemy (Ryan Holiday)

Okay, so i just this paragraph in the book I’m reading and i think it kind of explains my paralysed state that has lasted for more than 3 years now, it’s because my sense that of self is so completely and utterly dependent on either validation and success/accomplishments and as a former-gifted-now-burnt-out-kid, (which is the entire foundation of why and what’s wrong with me).

We see that normally students don’t get the extra amount of praise and adult-validation that is received by the children that do well in school so, naturally they develop:

skills (other than school).

An identity or sense of self that isn’t dependent on constant extra validation so they can function well without it.

Social intelligence and relations that are a skill important enough to be mentioned (deemed as too insignificant by these students which mostly a lifelong incapability to form healthy relationships and/or respond to them).

With me however since the whole identity is/was ‘does well at school’ the moment i got into higher grades that actually required serious hard-work, practice and concentration none of which I possessed, and my grades dropped so did my self-esteem and confidence resulting in insecurities and shock lasting till date, and so i have been, emotionally, unable to move forward, and it is finally catching up to me, insufficient work and last-minute efforts aren’t working anymore.

I don’t/can’t do my best because then i will have tried my best and the results will be my actual true grades which will, subconsciously, determine my worth in my eyes and everyone else’s (as it has), and since i have skipped learning any other skill it wouldn’t be very wrong, (and another reason why I can’t progress is because I’m a lazy bum).

Khair this explains the insecurities, self-pity, apathy, lack of empathy, and general uselessness that sadly, i possess, and like we say about Snape, his crush on lily ‘explains’ but doesn’t ‘excuse’ his behaviour.

Therefore, i will have to fix myself and acquire three things I’ve lost in this process:

Basic skills

An identity and sense of self that isn’t completely linked to accomplishments

SYMPATHY AND HUMAN EMOTION

And of-course work, work and work because the only way out is through and i can, hopefully, handle whatever opportunity I’m given by Allah to higher my ranks aka adversities.

You spend your whole time at school keeping to a standard, pushing yourself to not slip because you know your peers are NEVER going to let you forget it if you do. These 'gifted kid' standards becomes an expectation, a constant of your existence. It is tiring. It is traumatising. The constant pressure eventually comes not from your parents or your school. It starts to come from you. Eventually, as a gifted kid, you start to be disppointed with any grade that isn't in the high nineties. You start to only identify your self worthy by the grade on a page. You start to not believe in the worth of anything but that grade - not genuine compliments, not praise from people close to you - just the grade.

One thing us 'gifted kids' need to relearn, and what the rest of society needs to realise, is that being a 'gifted kid' does not negate the work. You put blood, sweat and tears into that final product. It didn't just happen, that essay didn't automatic poof into existence. You worked for it, put your heart and soul into, you strove for it and decided to accept nothing less from yourself except your best effort.

Dedication is not a flaw.

Being gifted does not equate directly to success.

And whenever you FINALLY decide to talk to someone about how overwhelmed you are, they just laugh it off and say something along the lines of “Oh you’re fine! You’re so smart!” And act like you cannot possibly fail because you’re intelligent, which just puts even more pressure on you to do better, and it makes it so that once you finally do crash- and with all that stress, it’s inevitable- you go down in a flaming heap.

And you can’t tell ANYONE about how hard it is because they think that because you’re smart you automatically get 100s. So you do everything in your power to avoid the possibility of failure because if you even answer a question wrong, no one will let you forget it.

One of my earliest memories of this occurring was in elementary school. We had just gotten our science tests back, and I got a 97. This girl whom I loathed came up to me and showed me her paper- a 98. Once she saw the red mark of failure on mine, she literally started jumping up and down, and yelling to everyone “I finally got a better grade than Cas! I’m smarter than Cas!”, not realizing that she was establishing herself as one of the first cracks in my self esteem and sense of self worth.

When you’re constantly patronized for not getting an amazing score, it can be difficult to think that any grade below the best is acceptable. You push yourself so hard that a 99/100 is terrible, and you almost go into panic attacks when you don’t automatically understand something and are able to achieve it perfectly.

I’m not saying that gifted kids have it harder than others, I’m just saying that the pressure is different because it’s less from other people and more from us constantly pushing ourselves to get the best grade, and quitting if something looks like it has a bad outcome.

And eventually we burn out. After years and years, we stop. Because we realize, no matter how high of a grade we get, no matter how many extra credit points we earned, and irregardless of the high exam scores, we will never be able to escape that voice in our heads telling us to be better.

I remember reading an article once on imposter syndrome, and it rung a bell for me and many of my gifted classmates.

Most gifted kids I’ve met fit one or more of the following categories:

1) They hold everyone else to the same standard, and believe that they are not smarter or more talented than others and that anyone could do what they’ve done

2) They don’t believe they’re gifted, and actually believe that nearly their whole lives they’ve been placed in the wrong program

3) They excell at everything they do and when met with a challenge they know they won’t win, will automatically give up for fear of losing

All of these stem from self-doubt and lack of confidence in oneself. I myself constantly tell myself every day that I need to be better, that anyone else could do what I’m doing, etc.

Even after I had taken my SATs when I was 12 and gotten accepted into various programs for talented children, I was constantly worrying about people finding me out, when, of course, there was nothing TO find out. Nevertheless, I would always freak out if someone asked about my grades, or if I couldn’t locate my homework because I was SO worried that I would fail all my classes, become a high school dropout, and never make it anywhere in life.

To be honest, even now that I have a good career, these are STILL thoughts of mine, and I’ve wondered time and time again why I still have them, and why I never asked for help.

Until I realized I did.

Yet whenever I went to someone- a friend, a relative, etc.- they would tell me “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine”. Even after crying for thirty minutes, and having anxiety attacks every time an exam would near, they still told me I had nothing to worry about, and that it wasn’t POSSIBLE for me to fail.

That’s accurate, by the way. I’ve had three people tell me “You can’t fail!” After I was worrying about an upcoming quiz or assignment.

My point is, I feel like the only representation gifted kids get that comes even close to this is what’s known as Gifted Kid Burnout, but we shouldn’t be lightheartedly joking about anxiety and depression! I have friends that have gone to very dark places because of these issues and it should not be something that we turn into an aesthetic!!

We need to recognize that people, even ones that are smart, struggle with mental health, too.

And I’m not just rallying for gifted kids, we should take more notice of mental health as a whole. I’m just focusing on the classic gifted kid because I sometimes feel like it is impossible for them to find someone who will listed and understand what they’re going through without brushing it off or saying that they’re too smart to fail.

I’m a chronic overthinker.

I’m quite good at puzzles, both the jigsaw and logic variety. I’m particularly fond of Nonograms.

I was a “gifted” kid in school. I excelled in all academic subjects until I hit Chemistry and Physics, which just didn’t *click*, and I struggled to keep my grades up in those classes.

I have not gone, nor am I going to go, to college.

I collect Transformers (again, the puzzle aspect).

I’m a visual/spatial learner. I’m possibly mild ADHD. I frequently forget or lack motivation to perform tasks. I remember random little details, and forget others.

Again, INFJ. I’m not particularly secretive for an INFJ, though. I’m very open about certain things and will clumsily attempt to make friends with various people.

I’m currently an HVAC technician, but I’m considering a career switch to nonfiction writing of some sort. Still working out the logistics of doing that without a degree...