... should I stop learning or experimenting, I would die miserably.
I'm 26 (for the stats: Italian, female) and my second Mensa test reported a score of 122 (Wechsler). The first time I tried to enter Mensa (with my fianc�, who's gifted and passed the Mensa test) I scored a measly 106, but that low score gave me the prompt to look more deeply into my potential, particularly the fact that - believing to be a complete idiot in math and sciences in general - I've never worked to hone my logic-mathematical skills.
Rather, I always believed in my artistic and writing skills.
According to my parents, I scribbled my first 'drawing' at less than 10 months, read the alphabet at 2 and knew how to draw with spatial depth/3D effect at 5. My pediatrician had labeled me as "precocious". When my brother and sister (twins) were born, I was 6, and event got me curious about how twins were placed in a woman's belly and how conception and birth occurred; so, when my parents were not around, I browsed through my parents' medical encyclopedia to find out. At age 8 I was an avid parenting magazine reader, so much that I got reprimanded by my teachers for reading things not suitable for my age. At 9, I wrote my first novel and then rewrote on my typewriter at 13, sewing the pages myself to make it a homemade book. Also, at 11 I started homeschooling my brother and sister, on vacation, which turned out to be a rewarding activity for all three of us, and that led me to write
this article and
this other on creativity last year.
I was always a 'weirdo', a super-curious, artistically creative and pretty solitary girl - I just found that
I may be a HSP - but I realized only recently that perhaps all I have is the traits of a 'gifted person'. It makes me feel better because I no longer perceive myself as a 'joke' of nature or, as many in high school used to define me, 'abnormal'.
I suffered from depression during my teen years, and to add to it, my academic perfectionism (because of an inferiority complex that made me link my right to exist to my grades) a terrible nervous breakdown that mentally 'impaired' me for years, so much that studying and learning had become impossible, if not at subconscious level.
I'm still not completely over it, but the thirst for knowledge that defines my persona is slowly - but unmistakably - winning over the breakdown after-effect.
That's why I chose to be a freelancer - I can write, draw, design, code and find new connections among all subjects I love, which are... a lot. And I can keep learning. Not that my parents really approve of my incapacity to focus on one activity/job only, but there's nothing I can do about that: if I were to remove something from my life, I would suffer deeply.
In the end - and even though thinking of myself as 'gifted' gives me the sense of belonging and the self-esteem boost to improve myself and continue learning every day - I think what really matters is that I continue being 'Luana'.
Being my unique self among 7 billion human beings, that is - as we're all wonderfully unique.
P.S. This thread was meant to be a new user's introduction, for how meaningful and in-context I tried to make it... I hope I didn't show arrogance or vanity - I abhor both, and if I accidentally showed any of those 'traits'... know that I didn't mean to.
