Just a warning: this is a big, stressed-out hot garbage pile of a rant.

Hey, 16 y/o here from a tiny town - just some context here: I skipped first grade, which immediately got me notorious as the "weird kid genius who skipped a grade" in our tiny school district. I was pretty weird - obsessed with cats, very impulsive, poor sense of boundaries. In addition to my poor childhood social skills, my Mom was an immigrant who can't drive and my Dad had a severe illness so most of my childhood was pill bottles, CSI Miami, GirlsGoGames, Newgrounds, and my dementia-afflicted grandmother (bless her soul) who lived with us far beyond when she should have because we couldn't afford the old folks' home. My Dad's side is not in contact with our family, and my Mom's side is all dead. Both my parents were weird paranoid recluses and they got worse over the years and also have had two more kids since then who are both young.

Untreated bipolar disorder has basically wrecked my life since 2019. I'm planning on getting that fixed (read: chemically lobotomized) once I either get emancipated by court order or turn 18.

You go on TikTok and it seems that ""failed"" (no one is ever a failure, but,) gifted kids seem to be the norm on there. I think it's a consequence of an artificially puffed-up ego combined with natural social weirdness combined with the internet. Emo nerds lip-syncing to "Oh no!" and "Are you satisfied?" by MARINA is the natural consequence of telling every kid that can learn their times tables quickly that they can be an astronaut.

I want to stop feeling like a failure just because I haven't done anything incredible to earn infinite validation. Because I'm not a failure. But I feel that way due to depressed narcissism. It's impressive to read at an 8th grade level when you're 4, but it's not so impressive when you're 30 and... what? You read at a "39 year old" level?

I screwed up my grades due to an untreated psychotic episode, and I dropped from first in the class to about the sixteenth. Which... isn't bad. But not in the top 10%. Not far out from it - it's in the top 11%. But it's all bullshit anyway. Grades are dumb. I'm tryna do an associate's degree online before I graduate since CC is free where I live for DE students and I've maxed out basically all of the classes at my little country school anyway. I don't know, man. I'm not high right now, either. I don't smoke weed because my social skills are too bad for me to acquire it.

"yo man... got... y'know, the devil's lettuce?"

I'm just thinking out loud here. Er.... by text. I'm watching my fingers type this out and I'm now hyperaware of that and I can continue this weird inception of self-awareness infinitely but I'd rather not.

I mean... I'm just looking for friends, I guess? Tryna not feel like a freak here. I feel like the way I naturally communicate can seem pretentious, like a robot that's liquified and split itself down too many paths and then solidified and the final product of the essays I write is just those metaphorical solidified former robot pieces strapped together with duct tape.

Aaaaand... That metaphor came apart. Just like my life (luhmayo ecks dee)

I wish more modern teenagers used forum-style stuff like this. I'm sick and tired of short-form content always being shoved down our throats.

I need to get a job. I'm basically an adult at this point - I'm no longer cute and no one's gonna provide for me. I need to gain a backbone.

And study for the SATs (I got 1400 on my PSAT, no practice since I didn't know what the National Merit Scholarship was, and on 5 hours of sleep due to a rat infestation). Narrowly missed it.

My car will be fixed soon. I have my permit.

My life is an exercise in permanently delayed gratification.


uhhh WOW this got off-topic.
I was just about to ask what colleges would take someone with medium GPA and high SAT but I got a little carried away uhhhhh

mods plz dont remove my post this forum is kinda dead anyway