Ashariel wrote:
I don't know if 'intimidate' is the right word, but I learned as a kid that nobody likes a know-it-all, or a teacher's pet, or a show-off. So I learned early on to just keep quiet, and often pretended not to know the answers to things in school, so I wouldn't get picked on.
It's interesting how we get bullied for our strengths, as well as our weaknesses.
^This, but it was the teachers who were mean about it, more so than the other kids. They would stop calling on me in class because they said I had to give the other students a chance. So I learned early on to just keep my mouth shut. But then someone would get mad because I knew the answer all along and didn't say what it was, so I couldn't win either way.
I do think the teachers found me intimidating. Some were really nice to me and I tended to be teacher's pet, not just because I was the smart kid but because I got upset and cried so easily. But some teachers were really nasty towards me and seemed like they disliked me in particular because I was smart.
Other kids picked on me more for physical things, like my pale skin, poor posture, tremor, and lack of athletic ability. And they teased me for being quiet or "shy" and for crying. I think being smart was maybe the one thing that allowed me some respect, but ironically I wasn't supposed to show how smart I was either.
As I got older, I got sent to counselors a lot in school but they couldn't really do anything with me. I always knew what they were getting at if they asked me a question so they couldn't pull any kind of tricks on me. When I was in private school they required me to see a counselor under supervision of a psychologist, and the two of them working together couldn't crack me. They finally told my mother that they couldn't counsel me because I knew too much about psychology and they wouldn't see me anymore.
I found out in jobs that supervisors don't like it when you point out things that they didn't know, or didn't notice, so I learned to keep my mouth shut about things like that too.
If I let people know how smart I am, I risk that they will hate me for it, but if I don't let them know, they assume I'm much less intelligent than I am and talk down to me. I feel like I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't. I think people basically just mistreat me because I'm me, no matter what I do. So I don't know how on earth I am even supposed to be me. When I think about all the mixed messages I've gotten from other people over the years, I think it is a miracle I can still function at all.