ok i'm ready to stop caring about being smart over being kind

reminding my inner child that jfc that's not the point

I am terrified of being stupid. So terrified! I’ve not even tried to hide this in my online social media. I tweet very vulnerably, and my past Instagram captions also talk about this. I always wonder if people think I’m intelligent, or will think I’m empty headed. The only reason I censor myself is because I honestly gave up on proving it for the most part, but when I’m at my lowest, that fear creeps up and chokes me to death.

I don’t know who told me at some point that it wasn’t okay to just be my bimbo self, but it definitely was an adult in my life who was concerned I wouldn’t be cut out for the real world unless I cut the spacey act. I remember elementary school parent teacher conferences where my mom heard that I was “bad at expressing myself” and “concerns over my inability to memorize multiplication tables” threatened to set me back in the talented and gifted program.

As I got older, the oppressors switched from the voices of my teachers to the voices of my fellow AP-class-taking peers. The kids with the highest GPAs were put on pedestals; the kids who went to state school were talked shit on. There was a spreadsheet of everyone’s class ranking calculated by hand because winter quarter rankings came out after grades did, and people needed the ranking for their college applications. I lived in fear of embarrassing my family and social ostracization, and frequently stayed up late so I could achieve well in school. At that point, I just wanted to be good enough to be respected by people.

It wasn’t even that I was getting bad marks in school. My grades were never terrible; I graduated with a 4.3 GPA and got mostly 4’s and 5’s on all 12 of my AP tests. I worked hard. But I knew I didn’t catch onto STEM classes easily. And more importantly, I wasn’t very street smart; it took me longer to figure out how to put together furniture, how to tie my shoes, how to navigate certain socially tense situations as a young child. These flaws defined me far more. When I opted out of taking AP Chemistry and Calculus, I felt like the world’s biggest loser.

Implicitly, I gained a sense of dread over time as I got bullied for being “weird” and “too talkative.” I didn’t think “being good with people” was an inherent strength that would make me money or anything that “mattered,” because I also didn’t see people around me directly suffering the consequences of being an asshole. I wondered if I was the only one who was skeptical of others’ goodness, and felt alone.

People would ask me what I got as a final grade in certain subjects and I would internalize any apprehensive looks if I scored lower. To me, social status was also associated with being conventionally “smart,” when everyone was trying to cheat and pretend they’d read the book in AP Lit and didn’t get why I was so nerdy about it.

The worst part was I still wanted to be people’s friends. I’d cry from hearing about the things people said about me, joking that I traded IQ points for words uttered per minute, wondering when I’d be good enough for everyone. “Everyone,” in that case, being my small childhood West Coast suburb.

When I went to journalism school, the obsession with being smart turned into trying to write good “think piece” articles. I sucked at those, so I switched into reporting instead of cultural criticism. I still longed for the day that I could be seen as “rational” or “pragmatic,” qualities that I felt were befitting of a typical political reporter. I did notice that my cheery disposition did open people up enough to give me good quotes if I was reporting regular stories, but I balked at analysis and felt ashamed of myself.

Now I correlate my “failed attempts to be smart” with my income, where I tell myself that I was never “good enough” to have a tech job, to work in computer science, to be a doctor, when it was really that I just valued different things.

I wished back then I could’ve told myself, “there will come a time when having a good heart will be enough, even if right now it feels like it just puts a target on your back.” I choose implicitly to have social groups where people connect over being logical and smart more than being kind and interesting. My strengths are in being charming and charismatic, and I’ve noticed that people have started asking me how they can do better socially.

I balk at the answer. “Just literally give up on anyone ever liking you early on in your life, and live life loving yourself in spite of your projections that no one will ever care about what you have to offer? Get really good at detaching because deep down you fear acceptance is still too far away?”

Sometimes I don’t want to help, because I’m too busy envying the other and assuming no one had it as hard as me if they have the strengths I wish I had.

But I’m getting over it now. I want to be wrong so bad that I put myself in situations again and again where I hold myself responsible for being kind, for being the only person when no one else will stick up, to make someone comfortable not because they can give me anything, but because I want to.

I get so angry when I see people being bullied, or anyone who has a terrible personality have status in this world. But I think in my head that they “got away” with it, while I had to be kind because I had no choice. This is fucking false.

Ever since I moved to New York, I’ve noticed it’s hard to hear and internalize the feedback that I’m a good friend because the move has entailed I face my demons. In LA, being a good friend felt like a rare and awesome and valued thing. Now, I’m losing my sense of what makes me significant. But I’m fucking gaining it back because I don’t want to forget.

I’m keeping a gratitude journal, and I’m telling myself this fact. That I will probably always yearn for the part of me that wants to feel whole, that I find in the other “smart” people out there who have the version of intelligence I wish I had, but that this does not mean that I have to stop yearning for the acceptance of my own strengths, things that people admire me for. I cannot stop yearning to express the part of me that is like the Sun, shining warmly for others to see.

I cannot live my life with my eyes off of who I am when I am welcoming to a new friend, when I’m willing to have coffee with someone who wants my advice, when I’ll be the cheerleader even for someone I dislike if they’re vulnerable, who’d offer the coat off my back to a stranger.

I have huge boundaries around my heart because of years of beating down on myself at the behest of other people, and I think those are good. Some things people say now affect me less than things I heard years ago as a kid. I don’t ever want my kindness to be exploited, but I have to not let those boundaries choke and suffocate the good parts of me.

Because every time someone’s told me something about my impact on them, how my sunniness inspires them, I realize that maybe rationalism isn’t the point. Maybe I should remember I’m playing a different ball game, working with a different score board than everyone else.

It’s not that intelligence doesn’t matter; it’s just that I can’t put it on a pedestal above every other good quality out there, especially ones I have.

I should look up to Waymond in Everything Everywhere All At Once, who reminds me of this constantly. In the end, his heart is what wins quite a few battles in the movie. Maybe mine does too.

It’s up to me to not stake my value on intelligence only