Some years ago Ben (not his real name) died. I don’t know the specifics, but I think I read about his passing through the Facebook grapevine, and overthinking about him has got me thinking I’m broken, y’all.

Ben was a classmate of mine in elementary school and was in the aforementioned gifted and talented program with me. (I brought G&T up last post.) Since fifth grade, I’ve had a pretty low opinion of Ben.

Knowing that he died, I felt cruddy about myself for harboring that grudge as an adult. But I’m starting to see my 11-year-old self differently. And, if I want to move those thoughts from an anxiety loop in my overthinking brain, I need to write about them.

So here goes nothing.

Ben is the kid who came across the hall from the library to the classroom to gleefully tell me (at Mrs. Hardass’s bidding) that I couldn’t quit G&T without a parent’s permission. (Read this, if you have no clue what I am on about.)

He also asked me “How long did this take you?” A week or two before that—at what I think could be a precipitating event.

See, I was feeling imposter syndrome before I knew imposter syndrome was a thing. I’d worked for hours on a project for G&T when I had the thought I was trying too hard, and everyone was going to notice out loud that I wasn’t genuinely smart.

(I knew I wasn’t smart because there was an in-class G&T brain teaser quiz I couldn’t noodle out. If you were smart, quizzes were easy, right?)

Anyway, after hours of labor and then hours more of imposter anxiety, I pared my project waaaaay back. Following my anxious mini presentation, a smug Ben asked me how long I spent on my project. It was an 11 year old asking another 11 year old a gotcha question.

I didn’t find it easy to forgive and forget the teacher’s pet doing me dirty like that. Did I confess how long I agonized over my mock newspaper project before realizing I wasn’t good enough?

Of course not. I was 11. I pretended that I did my best, belonged where I didn’t want to be, and Ben’s question didn’t sting. I swallowed my anxiety instead of asking for help with it.

And here I am 33 years later pretty sure I have ignored my anxiety for decades. To my own peril.

To be fair, when I was a kid and young adult, suppression was a workable strategy. But I’ve seen some stuff in the last couple of decades. I dated a manipulative predator for a while, married a compulsive liar, and worried nonstop for a few years what was wrong with me and then sat for a lot of MRIs and PET scans and CT scans and appointments I couldn’t afford while people told me how strong I was.

So now I’m stuck in an anxiety loop because I’m really mad at a dead guy.

I think I’m broken, y’all.