Rambling to no one in particular.

I don't expect anyone to reply to this forum, this is just some random thoughts I have. You may reply if you'd like.

I've always been quite intelligent. I was called gifted as a child. Not many children are writing paragraphs in cursive at three years old. I was speaking using sign language before I was even talking. 

I wasn't very popular growing up. I was dealing with sexual abuse, physical abuse, and a dysfunctional family. I was used to being very isolated, so I often turned to studying and learning. I was a genius, a child prodigy, a gifted kid. I never earned those terrific kid awards in schools. I was always jealous of my siblings, who won multiple. I realized not long ago that those awards weren't meant for the already gifted, but were meant for kids who struggled and acted out. They received them as motivation to do better. I was the role model, the terrific kid.

When I was in first grade, I had to move schools. My house had been swatted, my father arrested, and my mother didn't feel safe in the home anymore. We packed up, and I moved for the first time.

My mother met a guy. She was always meeting guys. This one turned serious. He was short and angry, but he had a house we could move into, so he would have to do for now. I don't remember much of him, besides having cable for the first time in my life, and being beaten with a hammer.

When we moved in with him, I had to go to a new school. We moved out to the country. I wasn't very happy to go to school with a bunch of hicks, but my mom wouldn't listen, and I wasn't going to transfer to the only other school in town, which happened to be a Catholic school. I don't believe in God.

This is when the severe bullying and sexual abuse started, and when I started studying more advanced topics. My teachers loved me, and I loved the praise and attention. I stayed during recess and after school, helping clean up classrooms, and doing extra work for fun. These were the best and worst years of my life.

When I was in the 6th grade, we moved again. Unfortunately, we moved to a little trailer park in the middle of the woods. This place was full of hicks. I attended a grade 7 - 12 high-school. The school was very poor and understaffed. Don't get me started on the incest couples.

My grades started to go down at this school. I started getting in trouble. I'd never gotten in trouble before. I didn't like disappointing my teachers, but they were disappointing me. 

I refused to do my work if I knew the subject already. I'd throw out grammar packets, tear up multiplication sheets, and call the teachers all sorts of colourful names. I told them to give me something challenging. I loved school, I loved learning, and I wasn't going to do some busy work to prove to some miserable teacher that I could. I knew I could, and that's all that mattered to me. I wanted essays, I wanted book reports, I wanted quadratics. They couldn't deliver.

I ended up graduating. I don't know how. I made a couple friends, but we don't talk.

It's lonely being intelligent. I am no genius, I make mistakes, my ego is far too big for an 18 year old, but I am intelligent. I enjoy intelligent conversations and debates. It's isolating being intelligent.

My friends are happy. They don't think beyond their life. The only thing that matters to them is what is relevant to their day-to-day lives. How do I have deep conversations with someone who isn't having an existential crisis 24/7 about the universe, and what's beyond our small universe?

Sometimes I wish I wasn't intelligent.

If I wasn't, maybe I wouldn't have been around so many adults as a child. Maybe I wouldn't have been so bullied. Maybe I wouldn't feel so lonely. Maybe I wouldn't question life and existence all the time.

I would love to live in dumb, ignorant bliss.