And yet, the world has so many of them.

All my life, I have been uncategorizable. Even when I was subjected to a whole battery of tests^[1] designed to help the school system in general and my teachers specifically figure out just what the fuck I was and what was going on in that extraordinary little mind of mine, the results puzzled people. I overheard my teacher at the time, Mrs. Arsenault, talking with the very nice nun that did the special testing and such for our school district, and the gist of it was that they were trying to compare notes and make some sense of me.

It didn’t work. I wonder if they would have an easier time of it today.

And the thing is, people don’t like people who don’t fit into boxes and to whom labels simply do not stick. People need their boxes in order to reduce the amount of information they need to process about a person to something they can manage. They need shortcuts like stereotypes and labels in order to change you from an individual to a series of generalities.

This is not malicious. You have probably done that with everybody you do not know well, and they have done it to you. It’s not that we don’t recognize the individuality of acquaintances. It’s that there is only so much room for information about people who are not close to you in our minds. Hence, shortcuts.

And I just plain don’t fit. As far as I can tell, I am almost always the first person like me that most people have ever met. In fact, it’s entirely possible that I am the only person like me in the world. And I suppose if I were some kind of rugged individualist, I would take great comfort and pride in that.

But to me, it just seems very, very lonely.

That’s why I have always identified with the old saying “it’s lonely at the top”.

Because it is.

And that is diametrically opposed to my desire to belong and be a part of things. I have felt excluded for as long as I can remember. And I can’t really tell how much of that is me and how much of that is the world simply not being able to handle me.

But I honestly don’t want to be on a totally different wavelength (hell, a totally different form of radio entirely) than everyone else. It is not something I would choose for myself. I want to be able to connect with others and not be so goddamned alone inside all the time.

For that, I need to keep on melting the ice around my heart.

And maybe learn to accept the idea of superiority at least a little. It might well be that I would get along with others more easily if I simply accepted that I am mentally superior^[2] to most people and concentrated on being the best genius I can be, instead of stumbling around trying to pretend I am just another dude.

The thing is, when I try thinking along those lines, the best I can come up with is thinking of average people as basically being children. I can’t think of a better way to accept that I am qualitatively smarter than the average person. I know that sounds wrong, and I definitely feel like there must be a way to be smarter-but-equal, but if there is, I can’t see it. And seeing them as children is, for me, highly benevolent. I love kids and want only what is best for them.

And it’s a hell of a lot better than other populations, such as thinking of people as idiots, evil, inferior, or otherwise unworthy and subhuman.

I would not, of course, openly treat any adult like a child. ^[3] That would be awful, not to mention a very quick way to make people hate my guts. This would be the sort of thing that is only going on in my head, and it would be a way of facing the reality of my mental status while remaining well disposed towards people.

A curious thing happened in Dialogue class today. We had been tasked with writing a one page dialogue, no actions, no props, no lines longer than fifteen words. And (after a dash to print it out after realizing I was supposed to bring a hard copy) I handed mine in, and we went through them in class.

And when mine came up, the teacher did not find there to be a lot wrong with it… and this seemed to disappoint and depress him. He did point out a bunch of places where there were unnecessary words, which I loved, because I am looking to learn to trim the fat on my writing and make it stronger and clearer.

But otherwise, he seemed upset that he couldn’t find more wrong with it.

It’s not the first time I have gotten that kind of reaction. I have to admit, it seems like jealousy to me, as Ayn Rand as that sounds. Maybe he was looking forward to taking me down a peg. Maybe he enjoys being the tough scary Dialogue teacher who makes people go rewrite things until they are good enough. Maybe he doesn’t like not being in the safely superior position over his students.

That was what it was like with the aforementioned Mrs. Arsenault. She viewed my being both highly intelligent and highly independent as a threat, and was always looking for some way to take me down a peg.

But I just floated along like an innocent little cloud, untouchable, and I think that pissed her off even more.

Serves her right, the venomous evil Nana Mouskuri-looking bitch.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.