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Whenever I say ‘my brain feels a bit iffy’, I end up pronouncing ‘iffy’ as ‘YIFFy’ and I’m feeling the need to clarify to all my loved ones that I am on the verge of a mental health crisis, and am NOT in fact hankering after anthropomorphic wolves with massive bazongas. 

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The Special Child

I grew up thinking that I was special. I think a lot of people did, from parents who say that you’re unique to teachers who tell you that you have potential to the endless array of children’s books and television about that one special kid who saves the world, and gets the found family, and the girl. That kid who, despite not being pretty or rich or the smartest kid in class, they end up happy! As a gifted kid growing up in an abusive home with two friends total and an army of bullies- both fellow child and entitled adult alike, the concept of that ‘special child’ really stuck with me. That fantasy of unrealised potential kept me going through my childhood, and as I gained full internet access in the delightful (and of course NOT traumatic…) years of 2013/14, this only grew. This was the Twilight age, when plain jane reigned supreme, and, to quote Olivia Rodrigo- ‘I’m not cool and I’m not smart’- so obviously I latched on to this idea of ‘loser-cool’ like a pre-teen limpet with self-esteem issues and a sad excuse for an emo fringe. This obsession only grew. Throughout the mid-tens, there was a huge emphasis on the ‘special child’ and the ‘loser-cool’ as all the kids of the noughties and late nineties flooded the internet in their most vulnerable years, jam-packed with gifted kid nonsense, a world on fire and the recent rise of the internet celebrity- a phenomenon where ordinary people became hyper-popular because they were LOL XD RELATABLE- not because they were beautiful, insanely talented genius, the way most of us aren’t. The world and I discovered that people who weren’t pretty or smart or athletically gifted could still be talented and broadly loved. Which, of course, was a little ray of hope for all the socially awkward, weird nerds with no notable talent out there, as there was living proof that you could still be all of those things and not end up like your parents feared: poor, unsuccessful, unmarried, and passed out in a ditch on a Tuesday night wearing nothing but fishnet gloves, a rubber horse mask and a pair of thigh-high, sequined stripper boots. It’s no wonder that we wanted to believe so desperately in this. Everyone has always loved an underdog, right? But right now, I’m not sure I’m even in the story. The world is still on fire, my childhood is apparently ‘a very traumatic experience’, and not a tragic backstory flashback, and the Hogwarts letter is nowhere in sight. One could attribute this disappointment to just ‘becoming an adult’, but I think that is over-simplified and dismissive. My generation and the one before us are not living in the world that we were promised. I was brought up to think that I was special, I’m now told, very forcefully and repeatedly, that I am not. I was brought up to think that I could, one day, own a house, I will likely never. I was brought up to think that if a person has that one special thing that one day they will be happy and successful and valued. Unfortunately, it turns out that the one special thing is rich parents so, obviously, I will not. There was such a cookie-cutter life planned out, but, tragically, that cookie cutter got run over by a train, and thus we come to this particular special child temper-tantrum. We are, obviously, not all doomed to failure and death and mind-numbing mediocrity. I’m not even a quarter of the way through my life yet, so I feel like that conclusion risks being a tad extreme. But I’m mad that we were lied to. I’m grieving the hollow, pyrite idol of potential that I used to hide behind. I’m scared that I’m behind all my friends who have jobs and reasonable career aspirations and partners, and I’m scared that I’ll never end up as anything worthwhile. I’m scared that if my younger self saw me, that he would be scared too. Is it bad that I hope other people feel like this too? I know that gifted kid burnout is not half uncommon, but sometimes I wonder how many people feel betrayed by the special kid thing too. If it’s just then I guess that’s makes me my own brand of special kid. Maybe we just have to face the inevitable agony of failure and write our own Hogwarts letter.

-G

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Hannibal. 

I have yet again made a venn diagram