Awareness

As time passes, her life looks less and less unusual, but a diminished perception of oddity by no means makes her normal. The distance between her and others has been put to various uses, even used to manufacture a friendliness that can sometimes seem genuinely intimate. That friendliness isn’t so much a lie as a mimicking of her natural affections. She simply recreates what she feels for those she’s chosen and redirects it.

She regularly has to isolate herself for a realignment of the thoughts that bring about her feelings. She fears having the two separated for possibility of denying those who earn her devotion the distinction of having done so. She assumes nothing about that devotion, even that her chosen people should care to be distinguished, but her own standards demand she give what is earned, meaningless or not.

She’s learned the basic patterns of people and that her lack of concern is universally mistaken for cruelty. In truth, there is no cruelty in her, but not for the reasons one might infer. She’s not above meanness, she simply sees no gain to come of it. Given naturally, her words are flat, monotone, and she uses them with precise meaning, if self-determined from a broader official understanding.

She is concerned with very little, which gives the impression of one who takes adversity in stride, but when faced with something that holds meaning she is fragile and insecure. She’s survived circumstances that would mean great strength in another, but some combination of natural distance, honest self-concern and intelligence has not allowed her to be tried as harshly as most.

She is seen as tolerant, but isn’t. She ignores most things for a lack of caring, but on subjects that matter she can be dogmatic, even narrow-minded. She values her arrogance, believing that if a subject is reasoned to its natural conclusion, there is no need to compromise, but remains willing to hear new evidence or a new approach to old evidence.

She offers no ease in communication, she doesn’t extend the liberties common to people. Courtesy is offered as she knows it, but not overextended. She is no diplomat, although her fluctuating thoughts might be externally mistaken for such concerning matters on which she hasn’t formed a solid opinion.

She readily accepts criticism from any who offer it with reason, but feels that a character including the desire to cause unnecessary pain nullifies worth and with it any opinion offered. She apologises easily, but only when she feels herself wrong.

She never got back to feeling safe after violent circumstances, and sometimes still feels the need to protect herself with physical distance, although she acknowledges that such is most likely unnecessary. She also fully understands the options left open by such a phrase as unlikely, a fact that colours nearly all of her life.

She wishes for a world that allows her childlike qualities. She is excitable, which makes her impulsive, but also brilliantly and contagiously happy. She is curious, seen as a zealot, but she feels this quality makes her better. It enables deduction, observation and awe. Additionally, it mixes with her natural affection to give her interactions strong focus, which leads to unparalleled appreciation of those around her, should they fall into the very specific categories that she believes make people worth her time.

Her reaction to people she feels are not spectacular, which includes most, is apathy, a lack of concern so generalised that she rarely notices it. Those who are spectacular fall into one of two categories, the useless and the exquisite. Even thoughts of the useless are met with venom that is nearly physical. She feels that they have not earned the beauty and ingenuity they inhabit, and hates them for disappointing their abilities. The exquisite are wholly loved and treasured, as much as she hates that word. She feels the need to protect and care for those people, to give as much as she’s able to reciprocate the joy they give her.

She’s often seen as overbearing, too intimate, but she doesn’t understand such ideas. She only marginally understands that her actions are misunderstood for requests, whatever those requests may be. She feels that stating her requests clearly should create an understanding that if unstated, no request exists, but that is rarely the case.

She gauges in excruciating detail the importance of an action or thought, and makes decisions by comparing the resultant information. The dictates of this process are often mistaken for unwarranted enthusiasm to the point of unnerving those around her, but she simply accepts, and then ignores, the drawbacks of a chosen circumstance should it prove the more important of options.

She’s sometimes sure no one can see her, in the fashion of the young, but without the intentions most commonly associated. She rarely sees the level of passion she’s accustom to in others and believes this means they don’t share her depth of feeling. She’s aware that the difference could easily be a decreased depth of expression, but wonders how a person could feel so purely and appear empty. Her reaction to such is not self-congratulation, rather pity, but without the implied condescension, which is saved for those situations in which she believes dedication has given her something that is universally available.

Never Sure

Only another person, they mean little to anyone and less to her, although that was a somewhat inaccurate statement concerning this particular one. The words don’t fall on deaf ears, quite the opposite, but they carry very little weight unless the opportunity exists to turn them into fully developed ideas. A passing barb is useless against her, she reacts only to what she believes real. Regardless of origin, the only active service of an insult is to promote insight and self-awareness, should such things be made available by having been insulted.

This one wasn’t an insult, a passing comment phrased into what was likely genuine concern, but still the same thing she’s always heard. “It worries me that you don’t understand” was only a gentler phrasing of, “There’s something wrong with you.” Still another person saying that what is so natural to her could not be conceptualised into anything but wrong. In this case, wrong enough to inspire disturbance.

She trusted the man who commented, he’d shown himself to be good, reasonable and honest. He’d gone to great length in being kind, without meaning to he’d taught her the possibility for expanded social interaction. These things would have mandated that she investigate his statement further, if she hadn’t previously come to understand that she also trusted the comment itself.

She’d heard all her life that understanding certain things, primarily the power of words as they stood alone, was fundamental to an operating person. It followed that because she did not understand she was damaged in some way. She’d tried to learn, ferreting out the details of any situation to find commonalities that could be maneuvered into a standard rule, but the research proved to contain too many independent variables for a solid conclusion. For a time, she asked others, but her questions were met with anger or pity, never an answer.

Having been largely unsuccessful, with the truths found containing minimal opportunity for application, she stopped trying. She chose to approach the world as though it operated on her terms, but her wounded feelings wore off. They were replaced with knowledge that absent understanding, even as it was expressed with supporting reason, was no balm to those who would be hurt by a lack of necessary interpersonal protection in assessments.

She’s been called sociopathic by many, but the term doesn’t apply. There is no place in its definition for a girl who is so hurt by the emptiness seen on almost every sidewalk containing people who should be vividly alive. In her world, the people she passes are full. They aren’t flawless or fantasy driven, but they do stop occasionally to remember beauty. That reminder is written on every part of them, they walk differently than people she knows, they hold themselves with pride, limit themselves to strictly defined integrity, and love themselves for their devotion to those things. They are philosophically and psychologically consistent, and she sees no reasons there should be so few who look like them sneaking around reality.

It’s a beautiful world, created and maintained by the understandings that come naturally. To her those understandings immediately ring of truth, and lose nothing on closer inspection, but there is no place for such beliefs. They only set her demonstrably apart. She finds comfort in the idea that a minority of one can be right, but fully appreciates that such a minority must also be very careful. There is no honour in believing what is comfortable for the sake of that comfort, just as there is none in adjusting to what is uncomfortable for the sake of its discomfort. Belief in objective ethical guidelines dictates that she find truth and adhere to whatever moral obligation it demands.

She has done so. She’s hammered out a reasonably complete idea of rational operation, but one that is in conflict with the vast majority. Differences between her and others mean little in keeping with limited importance placed on anything excepting the honesty of a standard, but she is curious. The questions that were put away surface periodically to remind that they’ve not been answered.

Mostly her curiosity fades into a place kept for the mysteries she justifiably believes will never have answers, but intermittently, in easy company, it finds a place to enter her conversations. Once asked there is no retrieval, and so she moves ahead, hoping her mistake will become an answer that has proved elusive.

That has not yet been the case. This time the response was not impatient or angry, but it still carried with it understanding that there is no place for her. Being still now, and with the conceptual rejection that forced her to smile and leave quickly draining away, the ache becomes laughter. No irony lost at the idea of so hurtful a truth being housed in a comment about her inability to understand why words should be a source of pain.