almost

I wish someone had warned me.

About the pain.

The pain of being the different one, the oddball.

If I had been warned, maybe I could have rewired my little mind. Saved us all from the years of thinking I’m crazy, or jealous, or selfish.

But probably not. Have you ever met a child determined to become easier? Me neither.

It’s like everyone else hears Bach, and all I can hear is the Green Acres theme.

The overflow. The strain.

Why didn’t anyone ever warn me about the pitfalls of being the one who overcomplicates? And retreats. And always misses the mark.

To be fair, sometimes the mark is moving. Sometimes there are multiple marks. Sometimes I can’t even find the dartboard.

I have this urge to walk around with a note stapled to my forehead: I’m going to get it wrong. I desperately wanted to get it right.

Maybe a second note underneath it: Please grade on effort.

And I desperately want to be different except for when I don’t, of course. When I feel seen. A spark. An instant.

And then I try to hold onto it. Like proof. Like evidence that I can translate myself after all. Like if I just stay in that moment long enough, I’ll finally learn the language everyone else seems to already know.

But it doesn’t stay.

So I go back to negotiating. Back to estimating how much misunderstanding I can survive without calling it something worse.

Not because I am breaking. Not because there is a limit I am reaching. But because I keep finding myself in spaces where understanding is almost possible, and then having to decide how much of myself I’m willing to spend trying to close the gap.

I wish someone had warned me about that, too.

Not so I could fix it. Just so I would know I wasn’t the only one standing there with a fistful of translation notes.

If you made it this far, click that itty-bitty digital organ! ❤️