dear june, i’m so scared for the future

"if I was gifted once, it is no longer a part of my life or identity"

Dear June,

“I’m so scared for the future. I have no idea if I’m as strong or intelligent as I think I am. When i was a child the word ‘gifted’ was how people described me, but I can’t see that, not anymore at least. Even if I was gifted once, it is no longer a part of my life or identity. I’m lost, on the verge of adulthood and it feels like a countdown to some form of hell I’m unknowingly about to enter. I used to think I could write, that I could create something beautiful out of the pain I was, am, in; the same way you do. But the older I grow the less hope I have that I was right. I’m disappointingly average. I want to prove to that 11 year old girl who had so many dreams that they’ll come true one day, yet i don’t know if they can. I don’t know if I’m just like every other person who believes they’re intellectually superior only to be embarrassingly disproven in their future. I don’t think I’m superior, but I thought I knew things. And being on the cusp of 18 has taught me I don’t. I know that it’s a part of life, but the thought of being a failure terrifies me, but the fear of being average is what keeps me wide awake at night and distracted throughout the day. I know that I will be. Even if I’m encouraged to pursue my dreams I know how my story will end. And I’m terrified. I want to do things. I want to change things. I wish I could.”

This writer gave consent for their message to be shared and responded to publicly.

Dear friend,

In 9th grade, I had a math teacher who used to interrupt lessons on algebra and the fundamentals of PEMDAS to tell us about “the wall.”

“One day, you will all hit your wall. The earlier you hit it, the better. So many people hit it too late, but when you get there, you’ll know, and I encourage you all to lean in. It’s worth it to come out on the other side.”

Most of my peers had no idea what she was on about or what this had to do with next week’s test. Do we have to calculate the wall's surface area? Find its height when only given the height of a nearby tree?

But I, who hit my wall at the ripe age of 13, thought I knew what she meant.

We were a school of gifted and privileged students. Our biggest concern, even in middle school, was getting into a good college and onto the path towards presidency or inventing the next iPhone. One kid in my school invested in Tesla in 7th grade and made his first million dollars before we graduated high school. Ya.

Teachers and parents alike chose to care more about our academic CVs than our morals. We were encouraged to be brilliant, but by one narrow definition that would contribute most to the school's statistics and give parents something to feel good about when investing $40k a year into their child’s education year after year.

This teacher, however, saw through it. The wall she described was an inevitable point she saw us all reaching. Where success, measured by arbitrary achievement, starts to lose its meaning. When we would enter the world and be met with the cold realization that we were not all destined to be the next Bill Gates.

It was the shattering of an illusion, the point at which we would discover we were bred for something we might not actually want. But who had time to want while maintaining straight As and fighting for a lacrosse scholarship that might finally make us worthy of our parents' affection?

I figured it out early because I was pushed into new perspectives well before any of my peers would dip their toes into the frigid waters of real life. Nearly dying from my eating disorder was certainly eye-opening as I spent many a hospital stay with a few fellow pre-teens, but more so, a smattering of adults from various walks of life.

I realized that the pressure cooker I existed in was a lie. A force-fed debauchery that was inevitably setting 99.8% of us up for what we would learn to perceive as sure failure.

Despite my awakening, I still had to follow the path. To graduate with all of the necessary accolades, to finish college and get that oh-so-prized degree (that I have never done anything with, btw), and onto a series of jobs that have never fit right but sound good enough on paper.

No presidency. No billion-dollar inventions. And even more poignantly, no personality and a mid-life crisis at 25 when disillusionment finally caved in on my rose-colored reality. The trail ended, and the “gifts” I was once prized for possessing stood as nothing more than participation trophies in a game I never signed up for.

I see you, my friend. I’ve stood somewhere close to where you now stand. You’re looking up at your wall, and it’s terrifying as fuck.

Please hear me when I say: this is not your embarrassment.

You did not ask for the first 18 years of your existence to be amounted to nothing more than your community’s misguided hope that they could produce a prodigy.

That is and always will be their embarrassment, because they’ve been through it too. They have the wisdom and years to know better, to do better by their children than what was done for them. And yet, here you are. A byproduct of their chosen ignorance.

Of course, the wall looks daunting when you have no way of knowing what is on the other side, when your only choice is to put faith in something you’ve never seen, heard, or tasted for yourself. No proof, just a blind climb predicated on your own curiosity and will to see the life that awaits you on the other side.

Many people stay on this side of the wall. Go through the motions of a successful life and delude themselves into believing this to be an exercise of their own free will. They learn to ignore the wall until it quietly fades into the background of their contained reality.

There is nothing wrong with this choice; it’s the majority decision for a reason. But as someone who has scaled her wall, I can assure you, they are missing out.

Because what’s on the other side of that wall is a beautiful thing. Unprotected, sure, there will always be some measure of discomfort in knowing that you’ve left what you were trained for behind. But in that unexplored haven, you make your own way, chart your own course, find fellow wanderers to navigate with, and ultimately, you find yourself. Your unfiltered, imperfect, wild-hearted, and free self.

There is nothing average about taking the path less traveled.

There is nothing disappointing about how long it takes you to scale the wall.

There is no failure in charting a course with no destination other than knowing where you stand now is not where you’re meant to stay.

The average is nothing more than a median point between two extremes. If one end is desolate idiocy and the other is intellectual superiority, I think you will find that most of the world's 8 billion people fall at or near average.

But what a limiting scale this is to boil one’s being into.

You are not a sum of your intellectual capacity and achievements.

You are love. You are joy. You are a writer. You are an artist. You are a free thinker. You are human. You contain the capacity for so much more than you know now.

These are your gifts. They ebb and flow like the tide, and are always uniquely yours.

They are not measurable on any scale.

You don’t lack the ability to be great; you just lack the perspective to see just how great you’re going to be. Time and experience will grant this to you; lean in.

Adulthood is not easy, but every hardship is a worthy sacrifice for what you learn about yourself in return.

It’s terrifying to look out at that abyss. To leave structure and safety behind is not for the faint of heart or the mediocre. It’s for the warriors, the dreamers, the believers, and those who know in their souls that their true selves are out there waiting to be crafted by trial and error and love and heartbreak and mistakes and wins and every little moment in between.

You are at the beginning. What a beautiful place to be. Cherish it.

Feel the fear; it deserves to be felt. Start here.

Mourn what you know that you are leaving behind; it deserves to be memorialized.

Summon your strength and choose to trust that you have all you need to take that first step forward.

Live boldly in your authenticity, and allow yourself to change, grow, and learn, as experience will teach you much if you are patient enough to listen to its wisdom.

Stay true to yourself, and you will end up exactly where you are meant to be. And I promise, there will be nothing average about it because you, my friend, are one-of-a-kind.

anyway, here it is…

-June

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