Smart

(CW: Self-harm)

"But you're smart, right?"

Smart enough.

Smart enough to know how smart I'm not. Smart enough for that to smart (hah!), to sting, to burn like tears in an open wound with every leap that falls short, every answer almost-but-not-quite-good-enough. Smart enough to know this sounds like whining, and to accept that fact - to know I should be grateful for what I have even when I grit my teeth and fight back snarling immature rage at younger minds burning brighter than I ever could.

Not smart enough to realise that you never ever get the whole thing right in one. Not smart enough to realise pain's the poorest teacher when it comes to honest mistakes - that carving lines into your hands under the desk for missed verb endings, switched signs, equations not quite well remembered enough to pass the test, that ripped skin and peeled back scabs and fingernail-width gouges through your scalp  ('I ran into a door, a wall, a tree') are never more than momentary relief.

At least they helped research, when everybody said that I should be an author - author, actor, doctor maybe if you sit there and accept that every time they talk about you they will use the wrong name, wrong pronouns, that you'll always be that strange and singular anomaly.

But engineering? Electronics? Tech? Computing? Coding? Well, my parents would've backed me.

Maybe one or two of those teachers who understood what I wanted, but the rest? Even if they didn't mean it, it was always there. That's for other people, not for you.

So maybe that is where this comes from - maybe that's where all this poison, all this bitterness was born. The wonderful, seductive idea that another me, another time, another place - that he could have been a genius. Or at the very least, been more than what I am.  

Or maybe it is purely I can see the gap between my skills and where I want to be.

Or maybe I'm projecting. Maybe tired. Maybe purging something that's been building up inside.

Either way, I know where I am now.

And I know where I need to be.

Everything between?

That's up to me.