I don't know anything

For most of my life I've been a "genius", not one with a high IQ—no, far from it—let's say someone who doesn't find it difficult to learn anything. I rarely forgot something I spent time learning and actually understanding. In high school, I was in the top 95% academically, with good grades all around. I was that kind of student—not anymore, but I was. I liked learning.

At one point I stopped learning and I always said to myself, "I am a fast learner!" and "I can learn it whenever I need it." I went months without reading a single page; my attention span dropped, and I did not have any focus when I picked up a book or decided to read something. I had the pride of someone with the past of being a "genius" who thought he knew everything because he could understand anything whenever he needed to. It got worse, and I started to have difficulty learning anything. For the first time in a long time, I was struggling to learn anything; I did not have any interest in doing so; I did not "feel" like it, and it kept getting worse with time.

Recently, I've been working on myself and becoming more self-aware, and this is one of the things that hit me hard. I actually don't know anything, ask me a simple question, and I will fumble so hard I will need to look it up. I'm at a stage where I have to reference almost everything because I don't know anything. This realization scared me, and I knew I had to do something about it.

That said, I'm relearning everything I know, starting with the most basic and fundamental stuff. I want to feel like my old self again, without the "I know everything" pride. I want to think for myself again. I want to put myself in a position to be creative again. I want to be a curious person again. I want to experiment with things I have no idea about to understand them. I want to learn again.