They always told me I was different. From the beginning. My teachers, my family, my neighbors. "Smart kid." "You're gonna be special." "You're going to do something incredible someday." Every word was a prophecy and I believed all of it. How could I not? When you're a child, you take their voices as gospel. I was supposed to be the exception. I was supposed to be the one who broke the cycle.

I still hear it sometimes. And I say thank you, I nod, I try to wear the title like armor. I repeat it to myself when I feel the loop tightening. I am, aren't I? I am smart. I am special. I am different.

But if I'm so different, why does it never change? Why do the people who were supposed to be better end up being the same? Why do the ones who promised me something new fall into the same choreography as all the others? I was supposed to climb higher, to move past this, to outgrow it. That's what they told me. That's what I told myself. But here I am, writing the same words into the same file that's already been written a hundred times before. I'm still sitting here, in the place I should have left behind.

And every time, I am left here asking the same question: If I was supposed to be different, then why does nothing ever change? What can I do? In the end, what have I done?