Eccentriculous!: "I asked Mom if I was a gifted child. She said they certainly wouldn't have paid for me." — Calvin (Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes)

As an editor, I've been trained to cross my "T"s and dot my "I"s, and to know where to put the comma, but although editing is my profession, it also serves as a metaphor, sort of, for my life. Editing spills over into my real life when I find myself second guessing and self-editing everything I say or do, which can be a good thing and a bad thing—good because we all know people that have posted questionable...okay seriously stupid, things and later regretted it, but bad because too much self-censorship can suppress expression of our authentic selves. I love reading those blogs where the authors are fearless; they aren't afraid to just put it all out there. Admittedly, it's a little frightening to put personal information out into the universe for all the world to examine, but at the same time, I feel like if there's potential for people to benefit from that information, then it's worth the risk.

The topic of giftedness is one that people seem to have strong opinions about. Should children be singled out for special treatment? What criteria is a gifted diagnosis based on? Does identifying a child as gifted help or hinder them in life? All good questions. My view is that everyone should have the opportunity to reach their highest potential. With that said, I'm going to be fearless for once.

All my life I have struggled with identity; who I am, who I should be, what I should do. Even as a child I felt scattered all over the place, all the time. A multitude of random interests and passions—from art and history to photography and writing—left me confused and exhausted, and my impatience, sensitivity and lack of focus probably drove my parents and teachers mad. I was interested in everything and could never settle on just one; sometimes I was afraid to start something new because there just wasn't enough hours in the day to do it all. Sometimes I felt so incredibly paralyzed by it I ended up doing absolutely nothing at all. I envied my older sister who knew from the time she was five that she wanted to grow up to be a teacher. Me, I couldn't decide. In my thirties, I finally found my niche as a writer/editor, but even that, though I loved it and I was good at it, wasn't enough to satisfy all the unmet needs I felt inside. But as I would discover later, there is a name for it—Scanners.

I am the weirdest person I know

It all started in 2010 with a one-sentence idea, a passing thought noted in my journal that read: I am the weirdest person I know. Since turning 50 the year before I was feeling anxious and incredibly frustrated about my life, and had been playing a lot of mind games with myself; wondering what or if I would ever accomplish all the things I wanted to before I died, that sort of stinkin' thinkin that accompanies your garden variety mid-life crisis, I thought. The death of my father, death in general, growing older and losing my religion were a few of the topics that weighed heavily on my mind that summer.

So one day I got to thinking that surely there must be a group out there somewhere for me. Of course, a Google search. Quite by accident I stumbled upon something that changed the way I had always thought of myself—a momentous, life-altering revelation that—ta da—I was gifted. I should clarify that being gifted by no means makes me a genius. Case in point: Math. I suck at math. It wasn't always that way though. I used to like math, but I digress.

My generation beget the Beatles and the Stones, Barbie, Woodstock, twinkies, the Internet; We baby Boomers have a lot to wax nostalgic about, but we also came of age under the influence of our parents, a generation of survivors and refugees who weathered WWII and the Great Depression, and as a result of a combination of hardship and religion they heaped shame upon us in copious measure. We must be seen, but not heard, we must respect adults and authority, no matter what (even dear Aunt Mitsi, whose breath smelled like whiskey when she bent down to give you a sloppy kiss, or Uncle Eddie, the family sociopath, or the nice dad in the suit that lived two doors over that beat his wife silly every weekend, or the friendly priest that liked little boys, the kindly, but corrupt cop); and other nuggets: Being left handed is a sign of intellectual deficiency—You WILL learn how not to be a lefty; Masturbation leads to insanity; girls WILL learn how to cook and sew; must be sweet and feminine and subservient and noncompetitive and virginal. Kids may be smart, but not too smart; they should not boast of it, and last, we should feel lucky and grateful to have food to eat, a roof over our heads, shoes on our feet. This was the message. Well some of us didn't get the meme.

I was that precocious little girl that laid awake in bed at night trying to wrap her head around the concept of infinity; the child that questioned everything, who pondered deep philosophical, adult-like conundrums like who made god?
I was that 7th grade girl, who on career day defiantly chose the "Mortician" seminar over the "girl-focused" beautician/nurse/
teacher/secretary kiosks. I was the one that thought too much, read too much, daydreamed too much, dwelt on death a little too much; didn't conform much.

I was never tested or even given the opportunity as a child in my 1960s public school, but as I began reading everything, all the characteristics, I was amazed. They all fit—the underachieving, the curious, precocious child, the advanced reading ability, the creativity, the feeling of never fitting in, of always being different and misunderstood; of leaping from job to job and interest to interest out of boredom and feeling unchallenged; the often overwhelming sensitivity, the overpowering feelings of intense empathy—of wanting to save the world; the crippling sensory overload that I often experienced; that being gifted encompasses a whole range of things, of which IQ is only a small part.

As a result of this accidental discovery, suddenly everything in my life made incredible sense, and for the next 24 hours I eagerly devoured every article; each piece of information I could find; soaking it all up; putting the puzzle that was my convoluted life, together. I ordered like five different books from Amazon on the topic of gifted and sensitive adults (see below). I told my husband about my epiphany and he just laughed. He said he knew it all along! How could I have not known? I always felt like I wasn't really that smart, that I was just good at faking it, or lucky, or something. Turns out there's a name for that too: ImposterSyndrome!

It explained why I never felt comfortable joining any high school cliques, choosing instead to float around from group to group—accepted, yet always an outsider; and why I felt bored and unchallenged in school. I recall one teacher from high school that saw through my ruse. One day after class he confronted me with a question that I've never forgotten: "When," he asked, "are you going to drop the dumb blond act?" How did he know I was pretending?

For the first time in my life I felt validated. I always thought it was just me; that something was terribly wrong with me and that's why I was so odd.

Gift or Curse?

Finding out I was gifted was a little like peeking into Pandora's box. On the one hand, I had wasted far too much time on ordinary, and with this new-found knowledge I not only felt empowered, but also hopeful that perhaps navigation through my life might be better now, if not a little easier. Well, I was half right. The good enlightened feelings I initially felt by this fabulous life-altering, game-changing epiphany, quickly turned to anger because it made me realize how much time I'd lost/wasted and wondering how things might have been had I known about this sooner. Why couldn't someone have told me and spared me a lifetime of confusion? Recognized it in me when I was young? Why didn't my parents see it? My teachers? These questions forced me to re-examine parts of my life. And looking at it now through this new prism of information turned out to be quite painful.

Consequently, I spiraled into a period of colossal depression (This site: Hyperbole and a Half saved me, seriously.) I had experienced cycles of depression before and had always managed to eventually work myself out of them, but this felt different—scarier, like the hole was too deep to climb out of this time. It frightened me into making an appointment with a therapist, but not just any therapist, one that specialized in working with gifted adults. Even her name was perfect: PaulaProber. I had been reading tons of articles on SENG and elsewhere and Paula's name kept coming up in pieces she had written, as well as others in which her work was referenced. What were the odds that this particular expert in gifted adults would be not only located in the same state, but in the very same town as me?

Our initial meetings were cathartic. It was like this mega brain dump onto someone that completely understood; finally someone who got it, and got me for the first time ever.

Without going into a lot of detail, I came to understand the origins of my low self-esteem and how certain events had set me on a lifetime course of dysfunction and frustration—many times, certainly, of my own making. Although my whole life I had been assigned labels like "difficult" and "intense" and "sensitive" I could now recognize that sometimes even I felt like too much for myself to handle, but it was okay. It wasn't a bad thing necessarily.

As critical thinking is to open mindedness, with self-awareness comes the opportunity for one to change the path they're on. Or, at the very least, to stop letting old fears get in the way of moving forward positively. Telling people you're gifted is off-putting. I get that. I am grateful for what I have, but I'd be lying if I said it's been easy. It's been a struggle at times, but the journey has also led me to other people that are like me, and probably most importantly, I have stopped berating myself for just being who I am.

If this sounds like someone you know, a child, a friend, a spouse, a parent—you, here is a list of gifted characteristics that might be helpful.