People with a confirmed low IQ.

What's it like to be you?

I was born with a severe case of hydrocephalus that no one caught on to until I nearly went full potato at 18,

then comatose a few days after when I turned 19.

Turns out all the issues that I had with learning things, memory retention, emotional maturity,

that was all affected by the water pressure building up on my brain.

I wasn't being a lazy slacker kid.

I worked my butt off to pass my classes and graduate.

I just couldn't process things well, so a lot of it was very difficult for me.

In my haze of a memory during the first visit to the

neurologist, it was determined that my condition was so severe I shouldn't have progressed

past middle school learning, and most, if not all people diagnosed with the level of pressurization

and compression of the brain as I was having, were in assisted living facilities just surviving

as shells. After needing a second

surgery, a year later, my brain eventually started firing the signals for mental maturity,

but the process was still pretty difficult. I had to learn how I learned things best. Things didn't

process the same way. I've also adapted to overcompensating to make up for the lack of intelligence.

Didn't have the work smarter option most times, so I just worked harder. It's been about 12 years

since the last surgery, and I've grown immensely during that time as a person. But the fact that I have

to work harder to overcompensate is still a huge issue for me. We still don't know how off I really

am because no one caught it early enough, and that's really an isolating feeling.

IQ of 87 here. I saw someone else with a 90 IQ whose story was very similar to mine. Words just

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