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I spoke about how a subconscious effort on my part to ‘achieve things’ started in this era.

I was the only lower middle class kid in this sea of extremely privileged people (people who had no doubt their families would pay for their literal Ivy League and Oxbridge educations). I felt like I had to be..

.. a better writer, a better athlete, a captain of various sports, a better debater, more conventionally femme

In order to ‘win’. I don’t think I knew what I was trying to win, but those felt like important status games to play. (It was extremely brutal to be in an environment like that as a queer autistic kid who wasn’t rich)

Some days I feel like I’m still trying to detangle from that world, but of course everyone I know from this period of my life is a person of some significance back home.

More importantly I think: I started to learn how to ‘achieve things’ to try to survive in that competitive environment. But I don’t think I ever truly learned ‘I can stop now’. And that’s one of the key things I have to work on for myself today.

That hyper competitive environment gave me opportunities beyond my wildest dreams. But it also changed me in ways I am still figuring out.