I've Felt So Stupid Lately

It seems the smarter I am the stupider I am. I've spent my whole life learning and trying to be intelligent, but it doesn't seem to work. Instead it's resulted in my knowing a lot of words and phrases (that I misapply), vague facts about situations (that I don't understand), and all sorts of weird assumptions (that I shouldn't have).

Now, I'm not stupid enough to think that I'm actually stupid. That would be nothing but pathetic self-pity and a spiteful slap in the face to anyone who's ever called me smart (which many people that I love have). It's just that I worry I'm not as intelligent as I think, or quite as intelligent as my friends are (or seem to be). I also worry that I'm getting less intelligent all the time. It seems like I remember less than I used to, or that I say insightful things less often (or the "insightful" things I say are just plain wrong). I just really, really remember feeling smarter.

My rational mind says that this is probably because I switched environments. In high school I was one of the brightest kids. I don't believe it's because I was smarter, necessarily, just more willing to apply myself than most of my peers. But now that I've moved up in the world, I'm no longer the big shark in the pond. I feel like telling everyone to tell me to shut up whenever I'm spouting nonsense, but I'm also afraid of how it will feel when they do.

I used to just not talk. When I was a preteen, I became aware of the fact that most of what I said was annoying to people (and if my friends are thinking "No, that can't be true," that's because they didn't know me as a preteen). I spent much of my teenage years consciously trying to teach myself to limit what came out of my mouth. I had a fair amount of success; most of what I said passed a sort of screening process in my head, and I began to feel under control. But I've felt like I'm slipping lately, maybe because I'm so comfortable around my friends that I've relaxed the screening mechanism. I feel silly just talking about it even here.

I can't bear to annoy people, I just can't!