Sometimes I feel like crying when anyone is sweet or sincere or tender towards me. They’re the smallest moments, probably seen as inconsequential from the outside. But it’s like this poem I wrote when I was sad and lonely and confused. The last line was “you forgot to tell me I’m okay.” but now I’ve been told. Maybe it shouldn’t matter so much, what someone tells me, and I’ve always tried to say it doesn’t, but thats not entirely true. No matter how stubbornly I refuse to change to fit in, to attempt to fit in, I still want to sometimes. I felt so alone for a while, it was like I was starving, starving, starving. I was afraid to answer questions in class even when I knew them because I thought my voice would sound weird, that someone would pounce and tell me to get out. And I rationalized, I said they wouldn’t, but the truth was that it wasn’t rational, they weren’t rational and they tried to beat me down anyways. And sometimes when it hits me that things are different now and I can’t help but sob, because there isn’t anything wrong with me, not like they tried to convince me there was. Sometimes I wish I had done this a long time ago, tried something new, anything, but then I think about how I struggled and where that brought me, and I’m glad that things are the way they are now, and I know that changing the path would change the destination too and I don’t want that. And I’m okay. Thank you.