I’ve probably done a lot of it in my life.
Almost never on purpose, of course. Usually just by being my cluelessly clever self. Answer questions too fast and too casually, causing my responses to seem flippant. Solving a complex problem that has been really bothering someone with a clarity and ease which makes them feel like idiots for not seeing the solution themselves. Showing off how bright I am without even consciously knowing I am doing it. Muscling people aside in conversations even though I am following all the rules I set in my head in order to keep me from doing that exact thing.
I guess when you are a giant amongst pygmies, or Gulliver in Lilliput, there is only so much you can do to keep people from feeling small.
Past that point, you have to just shrug and tell yourself you are doing all that you can and that’s all anyone can ask of you.
And if that still makes people feel small, that is their problem.
So I don’t exactly feel guilty for making people feel stupid just by being as bright as I am. If I truly am doing nothing to deliberately hurt them and waiting for my turn in conversations and otherwise being a good boy, then I refuse to take any blame for making people feel bad.
I mean, I would never faulty a professional athlete for making me feel slow and weak. I don’t fault math geniuses for making me feel like I do not get math. I don’t fault highly competent people for making me feel incompetent.
So why would I feel bad for making someone else feel stupid just by being bright?
I have pondered, tongue firmly in cheek, wearing a T-shirt that says “It’s not that you’re stupid, it’s that I am super smart!”.
Somehow, I doubt that would have the desired effect. In my mind, it’s clear that what I am trying to say is that my brightness should not make you feel stupid because you are only stupid by comparison to me, an exceptionally smart dude.
It’s not that you are stupid and I am normal, I imagine saying in a doomed attempt at clarification. It’s that you are normal and I am amazing.
I am sure that your level of intelligence is perfectly adequate to the tasks you perform, I would add, officially turning directly into Sheldon from Big Bang Theory.
Clearly that would not work. Still, I wish there was a way I could get the idea that I am very bright across to people in a non-threatening way.
It would make social interactions a whole lot easier for me. I would be able to give up the pretense of being normal and just be my wacky wizardly self.
Of course, society’s official advice for me would be to just be myself as hard as I can and to hell with the haters.
And that might work. There’s a lot of wisdom in giving up trying to control results and accepting that sometimes, you have to just be yourself and live with the consequences.
And I feel like I am slowly becoming brave enough to do that. It’s not easy for me because I have spent far too long tied to the illusion of control and moving away from that requires a leap of faith and I have very little experience with those.
But knowledge only goes so far. Logic has its limits and reason provides no reason to do anything. Some leaps are clearly necessary.
But I am so very afraid of being the little bird that plummets to its death when it is shoved out of the next and fails to fly.
I guess I better work on that.
More after the break.
The path of weakness
I feel so very weak and fragile most of the time.
And I suspect the main reason is my physical health. if I took better care of myself. Got my diabetes under control, made sure I got a bit of exercise every day, cut a lot of crappy empty carbs out of my diet, got fresh air more often.
Maybe then I would feel more robust and alive.
Ah, but that’s the real problem. I have done that in the past and what ended up happening was that despite telling myself over and over how much better I felt, a voice deep inside was screaming because everything was so much louder and more intense now and I just couldn’t fucking take it.
And so this terrible fear built up under the surface of my mind and gradually but inexorably I fell back into the old bad habits because they are what made the volume go back down to what I consider normal.
You would think I would have gotten used to the new volume level but you would be wrong. No matter how long I kept it up, that deep terror persisted.
In fact, it got worse over time instead.
So as much as I hate this terrible cold dark weak scared feeling that keeps me from getting anything substantial done, I will not be able to overcome it until I find some way to deal with the volume issue without losing my freaking mind.
Turning the volume up very, very slowly sounds good on paper but I have no idea how to implement that. Exercise a tiny bit? Put slightly more nutrition into my diet? Leave the window open for two minutes a day?
I have very little patience for tiny increments like that. I am a big picture type and such itty bitty baby steps drive me insane.
The other answer would be to go with my expansive nature and just throw open all the windows and doors of my soul and let all the sensory input in and force myself to deal with the situation all at once.
But that seems doomed to failure to me.
So I don’t know. Maybe I will ask my therapist when he comes back next Friday.
Then again, I will probably have forgotten all about this by then.
My life is really, really stupid.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.