Adequacy

People tell me I’m smart. When they're angry, people tell me I’m stupid. But most of all I've always thought I am nothing special. This thought has been the secret darkness lurking on the edge of every award and every positive evaluation. It is the cause of the panic I feel fluttering through my veins every time I open my grades. It is the feeling of dread that poisons my stomach and clenches my heart when I am lying in bed searching for sleep. I am nothing special. So why am I rewarded? It’s been nothing but luck and effort. I do the work. But there is no razor intelligence behind it, no panther-like stalk that treads through a forest of the unknown with ease. Mine is the blunder of a half-blinded man, who must fumble, trip, scrap his knees and tear his skin to find his way. This is not to say that razors of intelligence must not be sharpened, nor that panthers must not learn to hunt. But that their way of sharpening and training is more than admirable. It is widely yearned for, and when a small portion is acquired it’s coveted.

The round of recent testing did much to confirm my suspicions. I am nothing special. Average. Not terrible. Not great. The definition of average is easy. Yet how can that word be so hurtful? The secret darkness has been confirmed. The even deeper hope, one I had barely dared glance at and one whose glimmer and shine I have always pushed down under the darkness has been proven false. The hope that that I am special. The hope and prayer that I work harder than blades and panthers and I am so intensely determined that my fumbling could always get me to where their cutting, their hunting got them. This shard has been shattered like pottery, dull, dry and real.

I only wonder how long it will remain destroyed and when it will begin to grow again. It’s twisted. This process of evolution that I go through. Why must that shard always grow back? Why must it always rise above the sludge of despair and glint at me, wholly unsympathetic, and so beautifully bright? When will it disappear and let me accept? Not to give up, but to accept. When will I stop lamenting my place, like all those others who can’t accept that they are not a panther or a razor?

We’re all different. I firmly believe that. There may be overlaps and copies whose resemblance are to a frightening degree, but uniqueness is a blessing or curse granted to every being. I’m identified by this uniqueness and loved and called out in a way by my family. One day, I may even meet someone who loves me for all of my uniqueness and call it special, and I will love him for all of his individuality which to me is more than special. But it hurts that I am not intelligent. To myself. That I am not uniquely special. And I don’t know whether I should call myself stupid for believing this.