abilities, competence and regret
i think i've lived my whole life since age 11 believing that i'm the most average a person can be. before then i was a bright child, good at studies, just not able to focus completely. i don't know if i started telling myself this after 11 but this mantra has stayed in my head for as long as i can remember;
"you're nothing special. sure, you can do a lot of things but you excel at nothing. jack of all trades, master of none. fuck the rest of the quote, it doesn't feel true. i'll never be better than a master at anything."
now i'm your average burnt out student who used to be "so smart for her age".
in grade 5 i was alright. i was getting by. my grades weren't complete shit (yet) and i was a happy oblivious child just worrying about what to read/watch next and what her crush thought about her. my memory is blurry until something we called "star class" in my school. it was a class between grade 6 and 7. to move forward from 6, you'd have to do an exam and if you passed it, you moved to grade 7, if you failed even one of the two subjects, you'd go to star class.
star class was actually in line with the normal academic progression in this country, i'd graduate at the age students in other schools do, but it felt like absolute shit. rather than following the normal path, it felt like i had been demoted.
from then on i only saw myself as a failure.
either it was true or i became a self-fulfilling prophecy. my grades plummeted since then and my pride wouldn't let me improve it. i rejected tuition until i was close to staying back a year. i couldn't bring myself to study and drowned myself in anything but. fear was the only thing that let me graduate from high school but it didn't change the fact that it took so many nights of crying into my pillow screaming at myself to just "fucking get it together, why is it so difficult to just *do *things you're supposed to?".
then came college. with high school dead and left behind me, i applied to an art school for a diploma in illustration. it started out great, i was enjoying my work and my assignments came back with grades perfectly average.
"it's alright!" i told myself. "i just need to polish my skills then i'll start doing better! i've only just started, after all. it takes time to improve"
the pandemic reared its head and all i did was fail. i failed until i couldn't anymore.
then i spent a year lazing around and doing nothing but fearing education. fearing art. hating art. putting it off day after day, telling myself i couldn't fail if i didn't even try. i saw my friends and classmates get new friends, get through their studies, move on to different courses and travel to different countries. all while i sat in front of my desk hating my work, hating my body and hating my very being.
people would ask me what i was doing (in school) and i'd lie. say i was still doing my old course. because what would they say if they knew i was a dropout? if they knew i failed all the teachers, all the lecturers i looked up to. all these people i respected only saw me fail. there was nothing left of me worth keeping, i thought, i couldn't bring myself to do anything right.
i spent 8 months fearing art, fearing studies, fearing people and fearing life. until an aunt came along. i was ready to force myself to start again– just so i wouldn't stay a failure– even if it made me fear being a person more than i already did. my aunt (who i had only spoken to a few times before in my whole life) used to be a career counsellor and gave me just a little bit of courage to pursue something else i'd had an interest in before.
"i think it suits you," she said. "i think you'd do well. your journey is nothing to be ashamed of, it wasn't a waste of time. you just wanted to be sure you did what you wanted and that's okay."
she can be very overbearing, she isn't my favourite aunt to talk to but i'm thankful she talked to me that day. i'm thankful for the guidance she gave me after.
i'm better now, at least that's what i'd like to think. i'm in uni now, taking a new course. the one i originally wanted to before my mom told me "you'll go insane if you make this your career." i'm in year 1 of a bachelor of psychology and still lost, still unsure what to do with myself, but living day to day regardless and so far making it through the semesters just fine (although not without struggle of course).
i still think i'm painfully average. my art is just alright, i can sew a little, sing a little, drive myself around (narrowly avoiding accidents once in a while) and i can cook an average meal for myself. i like typing, but my speed isn't the fastest. i'm not the best at puzzles and riddles and i'm not the best at tetris either, despite what my some of my friends think. i'm not really good at games either, i can get by with struggle and my aim in fps is just okay.
my writing isn't much to praise either, though i've loved it all my life. i remember when i used to write fanfiction on wattpad. now i read gorgeous works on AO3 and i know i could never write as well.
all the things i've done in my life, i've never been the best at. not even failing, although it sure feels like it sometimes. i know i'll never really be the best at anything but it'd be nice to be in the top 40% in terms of competency, yknow? but this is who i am now; at least this is the me i've come to know.
I wrote this about a week ago and didn't know if I wanted to publish it. Having just started a new semester I thought, why not? Maybe it'll give me a little push to keep going, just to prove to my readers that I am doing better and that I can be more than just average.