"Most people don't worry about that"

I worry that I'm not as smart as I think I am.

This thinking itself comes from a weird place. Growing up, I learned to read early and had a voracious interest in all sorts of things. Getting older, I was always in advanced classes, learning things years ahead of time and reading books that were far above my age group. It was accepted, by me, my friends, my parents and my teachers, that I was pretty damn smart.

Worst of all, they reinforced that.

So what now? Now that I'm in my late twenties and trying to make a life outside of academia? Trying to write stories and poems, articles that people will want to read? Trying to read non-fiction that goes for hundreds of pages, no pictures to be seen? What about me?

Was I harmed by all of that reinforcement?

I'm not sure. All I know is that lately, as I search the internet for jobs and try to sit down, pounding out a short story or poem that makes some sort of coherent sense, the idea that I'm maybe not very smart at all is a tickling in the back of my head. A worm that won't go away, and a worry that years of therapy wouldn't be able to eradicate. I need to squash it and I'm finding out there is really only one way that I'm going to be able to do that.

I need to make some changes.