23-year-old Anna Garcia was considered “a precocious child” growing up, but she’s slowly realizing that she actually just had adequate serotonin levels in her brain at the time.
“Everything used to come so naturally, you know? Self-discovery. Starting difficult tasks. Self-expression. I really thought I was some kind of Da Vinci!” said Anna. “Then I was like, wait, that was probably just the lack of clinical depression and/or trauma.”
Anna, who used to come up with new games for the playground and make original music, is realizing that this is just what kids do when they have nothing else to do, and is also just how her brain functioned without her current mood disorder.
“It turns out, all human beings want to discover things and express themselves,” said Anna. “So, I wasn’t actually ‘gifted’, my brain just used to experience pleasure and motivation.”
“I always told her she was going to do big things,” said Ms. McNamara, Anna’s second-grade teacher. “But I say that to all of my students. I guess Anna just decided to take that and run with it.”
“As I got older, I was like, wait, why am I having trouble? I was such a precocious kid, wasn’t I? Turns out, no. It was never that,” Anna said. “I just used to feel that life was innately worth experiencing.”
When asked to identify when her so-called ‘precocity’ started running low, Anna replied she realized something was amiss when she was 16 years old. “I think that’s when I realized I’d have to work as a wage slave forever in order to sustain life, and the world was generally kind of a bad place. Haha.”
In her adult years, Anna reports a 180-degree difference from her child self, who was curious and empathetic. “These days, I’m all about trying to turn off my brain as quickly as possible, and veg out to at least 5 podcasts playing at the same time,” said Anna. “Like, what if I become aware of a thought or feeling? Ew.”
“Well, I’ve always been a normie all this time. Now I’m just a depressed normie,” she said.
Welcome to the club, Anna!
