Second Best/Failing at Life

So here's the thing: I've been second best since I was in the fourth grade.

Maybe even before that, but I can remember it starting in the fourth grade. That was the year I went to a "real" school for the first time (even though it was a ridiculously small private Christian school where four grades were taught in one room). There were only five kids in my grade and only one other girl. And while we were destined to be best friends, we went to the same church and were the only girls in the grade, she was by far the smartest girl in the room (she later ended up going to Colorado School of Mines). She was our teacher's favorite student by a long shot. Her hand writing was perfect, she had an incredibly fast reading rate, she was in advanced math classes, she was a perfect speller, and she was incredibly athletic. Compared to me, who'd never written in cursive before that year, never been tested on reading, and who was an awful speller, mathematician, and athlete, she outshone me by 100,000 watts.

Which, I think, set the stage for the rest of my life. I did alright in middle school, but once I hit high school, I somehow found myself "best friends" with the smartest people I met. Freshman year, it was Alex Deary, the only freshman to be admitted into the Sophomore Honors English classes and who was the only sophomore ever to take Honors American Studies, a class reserved for Juniors. She also got the lead in every play and musical and all the solos in all our choir concerts. Our friendship didn't really make it past sophomore year because she advanced to the "varsity" choir and I remained JV, essentially demolishing our friendship.

After a stint of being friends with only my boyfriend during my sophomore year, I then became friends with Hannah, who was perfect at EVERYTHING. Speech and Debate, Honors English, Biology, Algebra II, the girl could do anything. Plus, she was way rich and the only child at home. A bit quirky, but in a loveable and sweet way that made teachers fall in love with her, particularly our incredible speech and debate coach, who I desperately wanted to love me best. When she moved away in the middle of junior year, it was like the Speech and Debate team had been dealt a wound that it wouldn't recover from for the rest of time.

I went to senior prom with the valedictorian, who, bless his heart, couldn't really carry on a conversation with me with confusing me horribly. My freshman year of college, I bonded with the seventeen year old high school student who had also taken enough college credits to be considered a sophomore in college when she graduated high school. Did I mention that she was also the super-cool/incredibly awesome favorite professor ever's favorite pupil? Not only favorite pupil, but "adopted" daughter. Yeah. When she left for "real" college at an Ivy League school, the English department's staff acted like they'd lost the only hope for the future.

Later, in college, I was constantly a step behind the two girls who graduated early AND gotten their Master's degrees in a year and a half (they're about three-four months older than me). And so it went.

Topping it off, however, is Kris. He's incredibly smart. Beyond incredibly smart, actually. He took the ACT when he was hung-over and got a perfect score. He took every advanced class available at our high school. He won first place in national D&D competitions. He graduated at 17 and went to Colorado School of Mines, where he got an A in the Chem class famous for flunking freshmen.  He constantly outshines his classmates at CSM in every assignment, every time. He has designed computer programs that have won awards and written FRA programs that have become the models for the nation. When he gets to talking about his studies/interests/projects, I'm lucky to understand every other word.  He is beyond amazingly intelligent.

And he's marrying me?

Right now, I'm feeling ridiculously unimpressive. Even though I graduated magna cum laude and had an amazing internship, I haven't been able to get a job. Not in three months. And Kris, who is wonderful, is chock full of ideas of how I could be better looking for a job, or working on improving myself, or exploring careers that would better suited for me than the ones I'm applying for or telling me what I could be doing at my internship to shine brighter, or how I could be working harder...And I can't help but feel like I'm pathetic.

And I really don't understand what he's doing with me.Not at all.

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