kolic

I'm smart. Quite smart. Not world-changing-super-genius high IQ, but enough to set me apart. I was reading the science books in the school's 4th grade section in 1st grade. I was tested for the gifted class in 2nd Grade, showing a knack for visual puzzles, and while my school system had no real gifted class, I was put in the "Enrichment" program, a program designed to add activities to challenge those of us in the program, such as cryptoquotes and other mind games. Had I taken the effort to apply myself in high school, I could've been valedictorian and even without trying, I passed with a 3.4 GPA. I've studied genetics, history, physics, biology, and several languages to various degrees, mostly just scratching the surfaces, and while I've found challenges, I've found entertainment in the challenge. I passed the federal government's qualification test to be a linguist on 3 hours of sleep, a test where you have to learn a new language on the fly, purely from instructions given verbally. While the ABSVAB is hardly challenging, I qualified for every job the military had to offer short of geophysics and this was 6 years after high school and with no college and I actually got a higher score than when I took it in high school. Anything I've chosen to learn, I've been able to pick up with relative ease. This isn't bragging, these are just facts. I'm proud of them, sure, but the purpose of this rant is that I also hate these facts.
When I hit 5th grade, there was no enrichment program at my new school, so my teacher gave me extra tasks, often out of her own pocket. Being treated special made me arrogant and the other kids rejected me for that. My own fault. 6th grade hit, a new enrichment program started and people of my own intelligence as well as the social rejection helped to deflate my ego. As I went through Jr. High and High School, I couldn't fit in. And I was hating life. I didn't understand why the other kids were having so much fun and being so carefree enjoying things that I saw as juvenile, and I became bitter, jaded, and worst of all, envious. I began to stop caring how I did in school other than the classes that I just plain enjoyed.
I began going to the Gypsy coffeehouse and found people that were far more engaging, though I still felt the need to dumb myself down. I hung out in the LGBT youth, trying to figure out who I was, hanging out with and dating flamers and flirting with their fag hags. I hung out with the goth Vampire roleplayers and did my best to fit in. Then came Rocky Horror and the fetish club and the bars and booze and marijuana. For years, I've only rarely engaged my brain the way I really enjoy to, even if I've come to admit that one of the few things I really love is to learn and research and figure things out. Pot numbs my brain to a level that I don't feel bothered by it. It makes me dumber, but happier. I worry about things less, I don't get so stressed out, and I seem to be able to enjoy life in a way that seems closer to the way I see other people enjoying life.
I want to be smart again. I want to flick the switch in my brain that gets excited when I find out the next leap in science and how it works, I want to argue with the TV when I disagree with a scientist's ideas on the evolution of a dinosaur. I want to play with designs for things in my head, I want to solve complex problems for fun and laugh at cunning historical political manipulations. But I know it'll come with a price. Most people don't care to hear about those things, and casual discussion, I've learned, rarely includes a debate over the nature of the universe, the realities of time travel, or the positive effects of prayer in school (my thought is that by letting kids of all faiths and creeds pray in school as they need to, and covering the major world religions and philosophies with equal merit at a relatively early age, the kids will become exposed to each others faiths and ideas and gain understanding and from that understanding, tolerance. I'm a believer in "All or None."). Basically, once I start, I'll become addicted to learning again and thus have even more trouble relating to others.
So...I end up smart and probably alone and miserable because I'm over analyzing everything in my life but with the potential of challenges to distract me, or I maintain my acting dumb and continue being miserable and mostly alone, or I self-medicate with a questionably-legal herb and become something like the people I see around me and see if that works.