Dumbfounded looks, astounded gazes, constant compliments, being the main source of the questions from many. All of these other reactions and interactions are an almost daily routine for someone who displays an unusually high IQ, so much so that it becomes almost void of meaning and invokes nothing but apathy from myself. I know this may be coming off arrogant or egocentric, but this is merely for the sake of detailing my experience and providing a glance at what it’s like to have such mental capabilities. I don’t know everything, I make so many mistakes, and I still learn and grow like everyone else does, just in my own way. So as they say ignorance is bliss, but few know that intelligence is agony.

For starters, ignorance doesn’t just mean that you are stupid or are inferior mentally; ignorance is just the lack of knowledge and understanding. So for someone who is ignorant to their own flaws for example, they wouldn’t worry about the ways in which they have messed up or have caused their own flaws. They would most likely blame everyone else and not care about past friendships or relationships falling apart. Ignorance is something in which it is still possible to feel pain and to have what makes a human being, but they don’t have their minds working around the clock and picking everything down to a molecular level. In short, ignorance allows people to let things go easily. It allows them to not get so passionate about certain topics and issues of debate. It allows people to just be themselves and be mostly happy about it. I cannot speak of these people for the most part for I have never truly been able to identify nor align myself with these credentials for ignorance. To put it briefly, I am ignorant to general ignorance.

Intelligence is realizing your problems but not being able to solve them fully because our problems are comprised into who we are. A person with no problems is perfect, which no one can be. Problems have some benefit to keeping around, so it scares you to let them go completely. My anger is something that I tie in with passion and the desire to keep going, and although it harms so many connections with people, I don’t want to let it go because I’m afraid I’ll lose the thing that kept me going when I had nothing and no one cared enough to support me. I’m afraid that if I let go of my arrogance, then all the voice of self-entitlement will fade and I will not be noticed or respected for what I am. I have lost so much because of these and my other problems, but my knowledge of how I used to cling to these for life in a climate that was frigid and sought to freeze me is what stops me from extinguishing the fire.

Intelligence is being haunted by your past. You can picture how you used to be bullied and no one cared about you. You visualize how you pushed everyone away when you wanted to hold them close. You saw how badly you hurt people when you didn’t mean to. I’m notorious for being the person that attacks and criticizes people that I claim to care about because I’m afraid of them becoming too good for me and leaving like everyone else. I let my impulses control me and they repulse people into thinking I’m some psychopathic, anger monger when I really just don’t know how to express pain or emotions properly. I have never been able to get over any situation in which things turned bad between me and someone else because I always blame myself and go along with everyone else’s opinion that labels me as the bad guy. I can’t escape the shadows no matter how hard I try because my intelligence sheds light on myself that allows these shadows to fester and take harbor in places that I can’t truly see.

Intelligence is feeling responsible for correcting the world. You see all the bad things that happen in the world and feel the sense that you should be the one to fix it since you have the understanding of what is truly wrong and can therefore find a solution. No matter how the world looks down on you, you can’t stop speaking for the ideas you have or trying to break through to people because you know you’re right. You seek to awaken everyone because you’re convinced that you know what’s going on, and everyone else is just stuck and they need your help to break out. I have a hard time accepting that someone’s opinion over certain things are different, to the point that I can’t walk away from an argument usually. Personally I believe that since I use facts or at least tested and meaningful examples and events, it means I am arguing facts, and others are merely trying to deny it with opinion. Even when I try and act patient and understand how the other side thinks and feels, it almost always becomes personal once more. I am also haunted by the thought that every day that I don’t do something to help this world, that I am failing the planet and its people because my intelligence makes it an obligation rather than just a want. I have this calling that will not allow me to live for just myself because I see great good in fixing and helping mankind, rather than leaving it in hopes that someone else will pick up the slack.

Intelligence is not just mental. You can be a very smart person but be emotionally or socially ignorant. You could also have a smart heart but an ignorant brain. There are many different ways that you can be ignorant or smart. I, for example am smart in both the mental and moral senses but am extremely lacking in social, emotional, and psychological intelligence. I can tell you about love and how great it is and tell people that it’ll be alright while they are dealing with heartbreak, but I still can’t get over my exs no matter how hard I try and push them out of my heart and mind. I can tell you how important it is to save your money and invest, yet I’ll buy a bunch of different clothes and colors just to look the coolest and try and impress people with how much money I have. I can tell you about how hatred destroys the nation but then talk about going on a ballistic rampage on the police and slaughter them. I may sound like a hypocrite at this point, and in a way, I guess I am. I am afflicted with many traumas that kids that grow up in the urban environment, I can’t let go of the past, I’m melodramatic to the fullest, and my emotions seem like they are almost uncontrollable at times. Yet I always try to improve and build on what I don’t do well in. I wish I could rid myself of many of the things that plague everyday living and make it miserable, but I’ll die long before I come close to being perfect.

There is so much more that goes on in the life of someone who is perceived as intelligent that It could never be possible to write it all down. It seems to be very different and filled with solving your own problems as much as those of others. I’ve learned that knowledge is power, but power brings out the true nature of someone’s personality. There is no such thing as a sane genius, the extremely intelligent often have or develop mental, social, or psychological disorders. I for instance have ADHD, suffer from delusional grandeur as a result of psychosis, have unstable and unpredictable impulses in emotions, abandonment issues, inferiority and superiority complex, and other anti-social behavioral oddities. These things are usually not the laundry list that smarter people have to deal with since things don’t affect them as harshly and/or for as long as they do people with increased awareness and intelligence. So the next time you think “I wish I was smarter” or “Wow that person is really lucky to be that smart, life must be easier for them” it’s not as simple as it seems. Our intelligence comes at a heavy price to other factors in our lives to balance out our human values. Although ignorance is bliss, intelligence is agony.