The Weight of Being ‘Gifted’

“You’re not like the other kids, Emily. You need to understand that.”

The words echo off the cracked plaster of the kitchen wall. My foster mother, Linda, stands with her arms crossed, her face tight with worry and something harder—resentment, maybe. I’m twelve, clutching my report card like a shield, the bold ‘A+’s lined up as proof I’ve done something right. But the air between us is cold and heavy, and I know this conversation isn’t about grades at all.

“I didn’t ask to be this way,” I whisper, not meeting her eyes. The kitchen clock ticks, the only sound in the house besides my own heart pounding in my chest.

She sighs. “I know you didn’t, honey. But sometimes… I wish you could just be normal. For your sake. For ours.”

I want to scream. To run. But instead, I fold the report card in half and tuck it away. It’s just another piece of paper, another weight on the pile. Because being ‘gifted’—that’s what all the teachers and counselors called me—wasn’t a blessing. It was a target on my back, a reminder that I was different, and not in a way anyone wanted.

I never knew my birth parents. I was found on the steps of a Columbus group home, bundled in a hospital blanket, a note pinned to my chest: “Her name is Emily. Please love her.” No one ever claimed me. The story made the news for a week, then faded. I bounced from one foster home to another, always the quiet one, always the test score miracle, the girl who could memorize whole books but never quite fit into anyone’s family photo.

“Emily, come on. We’re late.”

Linda’s voice snaps me out of my thoughts. We’re headed to another school meeting, another round of adults talking about me like I’m a math problem to solve.

At the conference table, I listen as my science teacher, Mr. Walker, says, “Emily’s performance is extraordinary. She should be in advanced placement, maybe even early college courses. Have you thought about a gifted program?”

Linda shifts in her seat. “We’ve thought about it, but she’s just a kid. She needs friends, not more pressure.”

Mr. Walker smiles at me, kind but distant. “Emily, what do you want?”

The question hangs in the air. I don’t know how to answer. What do I want? To belong, to stop feeling like a puzzle piece that doesn’t fit anywhere. But I say what they want to hear. “I want to learn more. I like science.”

They nod, satisfied. Another decision made for me.

At home, I lie awake in the dark, listening to Linda and her husband argue through the thin walls. “She’s not our responsibility,” he says. “She’s just too much for us.”

I press my pillow over my ears. I’ve heard it all before. Too smart, too quiet, too strange. In a world that wants kids to fit in, being different is a curse.

The next morning, I find Linda in the kitchen, eyes puffy from crying. She tries to smile. “We’re doing our best, Emmy.”

I nod. “I know.”

But I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll be here next month or next year. At every home, I try to be perfect—polite, helpful, invisible. But being ‘gifted’ makes me stand out, and standing out makes people uncomfortable. I see it in their eyes, the way they flinch when I solve problems too quickly, the way other kids whisper behind my back. “Emily the robot,” they call me. “Emily the freak.”

High school is worse. The stakes are higher, the loneliness sharper. I win science fairs but eat lunch alone. Teachers praise me, but the popular girls laugh when I walk past. One afternoon, in the bathroom, I face my reflection and try to imagine what my birth mother saw when she left me. Was she like me? Did she ever feel this alone?

Senior year, I get an offer from MIT. Full scholarship, a dream come true—for someone else. Linda and her husband are proud in that distant way, but I hear them talking at night. “She’s going to leave. We’ll be empty nesters, finally.”

I pack my suitcase in silence. Before I leave, Linda hugs me. “You’re going to do great things, Emily. I know it.”

I want to believe her. At MIT, I bury myself in classes, research, competitions. The city is loud, the campus buzzing with brilliance. But the feeling follows me—the weight of being ‘special.’ The pressure to succeed, to justify the sacrifices everyone made for me to get here. I call home less and less. I don’t know what to say.

One night, after a failed experiment, I sit alone in my dorm room, the city lights smeared against the window. I think about my mother, wherever she is. I wonder if she was gifted, too. If she ran away from her own differences, if leaving me was her way of protecting me from the life she couldn’t bear.

I don’t have answers. All I have are questions, and this gnawing ache that maybe being exceptional isn’t about what you can do, but about what—or who—you have to leave behind.

Sometimes I wonder: If being ‘gifted’ means being alone, is it really a gift at all? Or is it just another way the world finds to keep us apart?

What do you think—can anyone truly understand what it means to be different, or are we all just pretending not to be lonely?