“I am tired. These people make me feel like I have a hole in the middle of me.” -DH Lawrence, from The Complete Works; The Plumbled Serpent

Is there something wrong with me? I don’t think there is, I know there isn’t. I’m fine just the way I am. I try to be a good person, attentive and calm. Deep as the sea, and warm as the sun. I try to be smart, charming, polite. I try to be myself.

But I’m too strange for them. Solitude is easier, but not less painful. I’m bored, everything’s neutral all the time, I don’t know what to talk about anymore. Theoretically I do know, but I open my mouth and they all hear the wrong things.

Maybe the hole is from all the shots they take at me, right in the centre of my heart. I’m torn between my own little world and what’s best for me. Solitude is comfortable, but I know I need the discomfort.

I keep saying that all I really need is a push. Someone to literally force me into a situation where I have to make a friend. But I know after that one push, I won’t be consistent. I’ll say “Hello,” introduce myself, listen to their introduction and nod along but when I see them again I won’t be able to say anything.

What do I say when they’ve already deemed there’s something off with me?

I am a person, just like them. But I’m uncanny. In their eyes, there’s something off with me that I’ll never be able to change, that I don’t want to. I am me. I deserve to be accepted as I am—just like everybody else.