To a degree, I wonder how long ago my solitude started. I remember whenever I would get in trouble. I would get spanked, and then I would cry myself to sleep. And God, was it a good sleep. But I remember feeling so hollow. I’ve always been highly sensitive. Not every kid feels every emotion at a ten. Me? I’m a ten. I’ve always been a ten. And being a ten means that with great feelings comes great grief that follows failure. But that’s the thing about being a ten: the rise is just as big as the fall, and almost worth it because of its magnitude. High intelligence means high sensitivity, sensory overload, and all the rest—but those are concepts a child in child logic cannot understand. You find yourself holding your own behaviors to a standard that’s unattainable. You try to manage the weight of the world. You tend to everything else. You’re trying to take control. Control. So important. I’ve never had control. I’ve always talked a lot. The stream of consciousness has never stopped, though. I feel guilty sometimes when I talk. Like it shares some sort of insecurity. And maybe it does. A desperate desire for connection. Or a lack thereof. Intersocial depth. An exhausting event. But I enjoy my stream of consciousness. I want to share it with like-minded, deep people. Most of my friends have been highly intelligent. I’ve not found many others that understand personal inventory. I’ve met others who can read a room. But can you read yourself? And truly, that’s why I say I think I’ve experienced life differently than others. Walking on that tightrope didn’t always lead me to the best end. Sometimes I fell. And the fall was not pretty. And sometimes it was public. Sometimes it was private. And sometimes I walked the whole tightrope and nobody noticed.
