The notion of being gifted never even crossed my mind until I started trying to figure out if there was some sort of psychiatric reason why DS6 is so very intense. And then, a great deal started to make more sense about him and about me. I never even thought that there was anything that unusual about the fact that I always "got it" before anyone else did, nor did I think it was unusual that I never needed to bother with studying before I got to university. Even then, when I "really" studied, I'd be in the top 3% of my class. As far as I was concerned, it was just that whatever I was studying at the time was easy, or so logical that you could figure it out as long as you took a bit of time to think about it.
But interestingly enough, it was the notion that I might have the OEs so often associated with giftedness that was the biggest revelation to me. Throughout my entire life, until last year, I always thought of myself as "feeling more" than everyone around me - emotions, anything sensory (all of them, but especially touch, smell and sound), the need to move, the need to learn, everything. Tbh, I always thought I had some sort of psychiatric disorder or something. I thought I was a bit crazy that I'd be like a dog with a bone when I wanted to figure something out, or that I would be moved to tears by some seemingly mundane thing at least once a day.
I still feel a bit unsettled by the whole thing, but I'm somewhat relieved to know that I might actually not be that abnormal. Though of course, "normal" is relative.
