Hopscotch

 When I was younger, one of the characteristics by which I defined my identity was that I was a genius. I understood maths much, much easier than anyone else I knew, and I could intuit things that other people couldn't comprehend.

When I grew up, I discovered that the very idea of a maths genius was a narrative that people constructed to describe characters like Ramanujan, Gauss, Euler, etc. It was an idea that a person might accept or reject about themself, not some implicit inextricable quality of that person, and there was certainly no moral imperative for a person skilled in maths to study it.

With that narrative disestablished in my mind, it became impossible for me not to question; is there any true narrative? Is there anything on which I can build my fragile identity on that won't crumble beneath me if analysed closely?

Sometimes I think that I'm cursed with great intelligence, to be forced to examine myself in detail until there's nothing left, but I'm honestly stupid to be so full of myself. The realisation I had is one that I think everyone experiences, and really, I'm just late to the party. The belief that you're the most important person in the world is sometimes called "main character syndrome", and almost everyone has to grapple at some  point with the realisation that they aren't the person they thought they would be.

A lot of people go through this as a teenagers, as they realise they don't have natural talents in anything, and from a particular perspective, they might think this means there's nothing special about them.

These people find their way though. I know I will too.

Sometimes I worry that I'll deconstruct every positive belief I have until all I have left is despair, but I think deconstructing my main character syndrome is a good thing. It can help me to turn my eyes to Jesus, and to people in the world around me.