Dark Academia Aesthetic

You know I always hear about gifted kids who stayed working and ended up getting burn out because they were constantly pushing.

But what about gifted kids who just stopped?

I was considered a gifted kid for my whole childhood but at one point I just stopped working cause I believed I was better than everyone, so my grades slipped a lot.

I went from passing everything with flying colours and people wanting to push me up 2 grades, to failing every class and not knowing what to do with myself.

And the worse thing about this is when all anyone can do is compare you to when you were 7.

Anyone else?

tw: derealization/depersonalization

i don't feel like i belong in my own body. i look around and everything feels out of focus and too sharp at the same time. are these my hands? are those my legs? who's touching me? am i touching me? the cloudless sky looks like a badly rendered video game; the foggy dusk drive feels more estranged and comforting than my own home. i'm walking down the stairs to get some water; it's dark; i feel dead. i'm floating around like a spectre; a phantom inside a body of flesh and bone. my skin is crawling; it, too, wishes i wasn't in it. someone asks me a question. "what?" it comes out more like a hum underwater. "have you been listening to me?" no.

life gets so much better when you realize that there are no rules. you don’t have to get your license at 16 if you don’t want to. you don’t have to date anyone in your teen years if you don’t want to. you don’t have to move out in your early 20s if you don’t want to. you don’t need to go to any social gathering that you’re not in the mood to go to. and you don’t owe anyone an explanation. sometimes you don’t wanna do something just because you... don’t wanna do it. that’s it. live your life how you wanna live it.

“Trauma permanently changes us. This is the frightening truth about betrayal. You never really get over it. At best, you grieve and make some kind of peace with it. But a major life disruption leaves a new normal behind. There’s no going back to who you were before.”

— Unknown

Via Pinterest (I don't own any of these; if you're the author DM me I'll credit you)

#full time surgeons, part time rockstars

Me in fourth grade: I am a god above you all. I have a twelfth grade reading level. I'm one of the two biggest readers in school and everybody knows it. This book? Yeah, I started it yesterday. I finished it today. Yeah it's 600 pages, what about it? You fools are nothing compared to me.

Me now: I can only read fanfiction and comic books. I can't even reread my favourite books. Actually starting a new book? Not happening. Reading is still my favourite activity but I can't do it. I am physically incapable of reading more than ten pages. I had to google how to spell twelfth. My favourite books are all over 1000 pages send help.