Gifted

I was a little person once, and the world was outside of me, enchanting me from all directions, pulling me from the left and the right. I was curious, marveling at the beauty, the wonder, and the vastness of what I did not know. My eyes fell on many things, but they locked onto certain objects, small cases that held papers people read.

I wanted to read too. Out of sheer curiosity, I learned it because I wanted to know this secret art. And when I started reading, a whole world opened in front of me. I wandered across constellations. I saw continents. I lived inside many bodies. I laughed and cried and learned emotions.

And somewhere along the way, I started putting the alphabet together, stringing them into sentences. Then, from some hidden chamber inside me, I began to weave a web of stories. I became a wordsmith. What a secret, magical thing it was, far ahead of my years.

People called me gifted.

I looked it up. It felt amazing, like an invisible crown on my head, a secret badge on my chest.

When I walked, I walked with my head high, my chest out. I knew I was different, set apart, not ordinary. And the world around me validated that idea. My crown became iron, sinking into my skin. I chose people, places, and projects according to it. I never waited behind the queue, never sat at the end of the class. I never knew those places.

But as I grew up, I tasted something new. A very foreign taste. My taste buds revolted, my whole body inflamed.

It was failure.

And because I had rejected so many places, people, and circumstances, I had never learned how to hold some liquors. Some liquors are too sour. Nobody had taught me how to dilute them, how to get up the next morning when you are hungover with failure.

My neck grew heavy with all the jolts, the pain, the weight.

Then I realized I must take off my crown. I must enter unmarked places, meet strange people, open myself again. Now when I enter a room, I enter empty, ready to be filled, ready to learn.

I am no longer gifted.
I am simply experiencing.