I work best by myself. I know my priorities, but I don’t know me as a person. I know that getting hurt is necessary for my growth, but I avoid it at all costs. My best friend is my sister; there’s a comfort in knowing she’ll love me regardless of my issues.

I don’t know anything for sure, everything I know is a “depends” statement of 87% belief and 13% wariness. I know I’m good at most things, but I think I’m average at everything.

I am incapable of privacy; I will tell anyone anything. I don’t talk about my current problems hardly at all, and if I do, it’s a numbed version that doesn’t reflect any emotion I truly feel. My attempt to connect with people is futile. I’ve never related to anyone I’ve ever met, and that is not an exaggeration. Every person is disposable, and it’s hard for me to think any differently. I sit around with people, and every word that comes out of their mouths feels so fake to me. I get angry.

I know I can do anything I put my mind to, but there is nothing I know I want to do. I’ve never looked at a shirt and thought, “That would go really well with those shorts.” I have never cared about things like that.

People in my life are going through the world right now and experiencing things I went through years ago, and it makes me upset. Not because they have to go through it, but because they aren’t caught up to me. Their situations are unrelateable to me in this age.

I don’t agree with anyone. All opinions are too extreme for me. The kids who believe in human rights believe in them fully; they don’t leave room for human error or fragility or strength. I have to walk on eggshells around them. The kids who leave room for those things and take opposing thought don’t leave room for compassion or the human need to feel accepted; I love people too much to be uncaring. I don’t fit with either of them. I am endlessly in the middle. I hate the word “indifferent.” I am not indifferent to anything. I have an opinion on everything. I am not undecided; I am centered.

I think and speak and write in metaphors and symbols. In my head, I am forty-five. I screenshot every nice thing people send me so I can look back on them when I am in the mindset that people don’t understand or like. I don’t know who I am, but I know who I’m not. This is not by broad definition and judging myself on that; this is through trial and error of testing everything I could be and deciding what works and what doesn’t.

I’d be happy serving at IHOP for the rest of my life. I’d also be happy earning millions of dollars a year with a doctorate. I love my job because people walk in the door and sit for half an hour or so. For that short period of time, I figure out how to relate to them. I can change my perception and my beliefs to suit every person who walks in the door, and I can be every person I know is in myself. I’ve been every person there ever could be. I’ve been a commendable citizen, a criminal, a believer, a skeptic, a victim, a bully, a hard worker, a slacker– I’ve hated, I’ve been hated, I’ve been loved, and I have loved.

My world spins on the opposite axis as everyone else, and I am always alone. But I am happy walking as a reflection of every footstep that walks the face of this earth.

I am alive in a world that is nothing like me, and I have learned to be happy with that.