There's a label that I have often seen mentioned in my social circles online, "former gifted kid" which in itself is often synonymous with neurodivergence. Perhaps this is because most "gifted" children in reality are simply children who took an early interest in fields beyond their level of academic attainment. An interest which give them a competitive advantage that didn't actually translate into any long term benefit.
Nevertheless this label is something that has been playing on my mind lately spurred on by a meme I saw someone post of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with the caption "Deviation from the norm will be punished unless it is exploitable" - with Christmas just a week away the meme is apt to be fitting for this time of year but the season and its nature imbues a certain level of self-reflection and nostalgia.
I've been thinking about friends and family, past and present, and the changing nature of my social circles. Christmas is a time for togetherness and all the traditions that go along with it for the most part revolve around social connections and exchanges. So much so that if you're alone at this time of year it can feel like that isolation is amplified, because there's a sense that everyone else around you is happy and fulfilled. I don't feel that way personally but I also recognise that the amount of people around me isn't what determines how lonely I feel.
For the better part of two decades now the ringtone on my phone when it's not on silent or vibrate has been Dark Blue by Jack's Mannequin, the reason being that the song lyrics have a line that says "Have you ever been alone in a crowded room?" the imagery it conjures and the emotions it evokes speaks to my feelings on social connections, and disconnection.
As a kid there were more than enough things to make me stand out, to mark me as different, the fact I am albino, my Nystagmus and the low vision that goes hand in hand with it, the fact I am gay which in hindsight I am sure many people knew despite being convinced my closet was impenetrable, but also the interests I had, or rather the lack of interest I had in things I was "supposed" to be interested in. I grew up in the UK, I was born in '88 but by any definition I was a 90s kid and if you were a boy in that era you were expected to like football, I didn't, I don't know what music you were expected to like because nothing I listened was socially acceptable, girl bands or boy bands both garnered the gay (derogatory) label.
My teenage years taught me a lot about conformity and slowly made me realise how little interest I had in the concept. I grew more confident liking the things I liked and cared less about whether other people did too. The more confident in myself I became, the wider my social circles grew reaching their peak in my University years.
After graduation it's natural for those circles to narrow and for people to drop off, your lives go in different directions, the commonality of the shared environment and shared experience no longer binds you and the strength of your connection is tested by how superficial it was. I don't think it's "normal" or at least, the most common outcome for you to lose all of those connections but in time for me (16 years after graduation) that eventually happened.
The reasons I parted ways with people have varied over the years, for some it was disagreement, ideology, distance, and the tone ranged from amicable to an avoidance of direct conflict with the "agree to disagree" that inevitably leads to drifting apart with zero motivation for either to stay the course. However, for others the reasons we parted ways were never understood in the moment but in hindsight they become clear.
Something I don't think "former gifted kids" talk about enough is one of those reasons, the people who were only friends with you because they thought you would be their meal ticket, and when they finally realised you wouldn't be they parted ways. It does become clear in hindsight who these people were, and their motivation becomes self evident, something that was always there but you just could never see it in the moment.
This "Rudolph Complex" as I am dubbing it, the realisation that you are (or were) the personification of Rudolph, tolerated only when you can be exploited, is something I've been reflecting on this past week. When I think about the connections I have lost over the years, in the first instance there are a few people who I genuinely miss, but who I think live happier lives without me in them, some of these I have a means to reach out to but choose not to, and some of these I don't even if I wanted to - pretty much all of my contacts from University were lost when phones or hard drives died.
In the second instance there are those I miss but recognise that I only ever connected with an idea of them, an idea that didn't align with the reality of who they were. These are the people who I don't reconnect with because no matter how much I miss them I know the memory of them wouldn't match the reality, because it never did to begin with, never mind how many years have passed.
There are those I don't reconnect with because I know it would inevitably lead to conflict, which both of us are better off without, and there are those who I could only reconnect with if they had experienced a "come to Jesus moment" where they recognised what drove us apart, and yes I realise that sounds arrogant, but I openly admit I am no angel and I had my own part to play, I know I am not without fault but at least I can recognise that, they never could, which was part of the reason everything fell apart the way it did.
If we knew each other when, and you know the reason we stopped speaking then this isn't about you. The friendships that ended with closure are the ones I don't miss, because the memory is enough, and knowing the finality of how they ended is reassuring in itself, nothing lasts forever and everything has its time. That aphorism that some people come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime, is what I am dwelling on because the only people who have been in my life for a lifetime at this point are family, and even then there are family members I haven't spoken to in years.
I am grateful for the people who are in my life today, and I would hope they will be in it for some time to come. I don't think there's anyone in my life who is only friends with me now because they think I might be their meal ticket, not least because of the stagnation the last 10 years has brought, but more for the fact that ambition fades with ages and people become a lot more realistic about their future. You can call that the death of optimism, I prefer the birth of pragmatism, the older you get the more you think about how long you have left and what you can conceivably achieve in that time.
There's a lot of criticism particularly in the gay community that is levied at those who write off anyone beyond a certain age, but this is something I think society more broadly also does, it's just in the case of the gay community it's associated with attraction and dating. The "30 under 30" list for instance is society more broadly promoting the idea that to be successful in an field you have to garner that success whilst you are still "young" and that anyone in any industry that is "old" and successful has had a long and illustrious career where they put in the effort already - the reality is that this is bullshit of course for a myriad of reasons I don't have the time or the patience to debunk right now.
The point is, whether a pragmatic outlook is borne of cynicism, pessimism, or capitalist fuelled nihilism, there comes a point where you revaluate the goals you set for yourself and what you think you can still achieve. I think it's that recognition that also tapers others expectations of you, they expect themselves to achieve less and project that expectation onto you too. Once they let go of the idea that they will become a billionaire they let go of the idea that you will too.
Almost 15 years ago now I left pretty much all social media for a time, I would eventually return with a different attitude to it though. The reason I left was because I was conscious of how shallow and superficial the relationships I had and connections it cultivated were; this was amplified by the fact these platforms were dominated by people I actually knew and had spent time with in real life. For a time after quitting social media I stayed in touch with about a dozen people, I had given everyone on those platforms a means to keep in touch if they had wanted but it was that dozen or so that did and the rest did not. That was my first recognition of who was actually a friend vs a "friend" in social media terms.
These connections fell off in time, when I eventually returned to social media I made it a point to connect with people I didn't actually know, because at least then the emotional distance and lack of investment was justified and the expectations were much lower. That's still how I use social media today, I know the people I connect with are people whose lives and thoughts I have an interest in, but there's a recognition that we don't actually know each other.
I don't crave a connection through social media to everyone I once knew. There is a curiosity as to what some of them are up to now, LinkedIn for a time provided some insight into that but most of them have now deleted their profiles and seemingly dropped off the face of the internet, or at least they're no longer discoverable using their real identities. I can't blame them for the want of privacy, after all I do the same thing. I am careful how much of my actual life I share online, even in posts like these the specifics are often lacking to the point where you'd find it difficult to find any of these people.
It's just over a week to Christmas and just over two until this year is over. My life is still being dominated by waiting for answers to questions, mostly relating to my health. The lack of direction is weighing down on me though, not for a feeling of inadequacy in the capitalistic sense for missed productivity or lost potential, but for a sense of frustration. For the last 10 years so much change has happened and yet my life has changed very little, that is the paradox I'm still trying to resolve.
