I was different. I wasn't too intelligent or stupid. I wasn't autistic savant or schizophrenic. I wasn't too artistic or sportive. I wasn't transgender or psychic. But I was different. Everybody knew it. My parents, my teachers, my friends... It took a while for me to admit it but eventually, I did. I was different.
You may ask why it was so hard for me to acknowledge my differences, given that nowadays there is so much emphasis on accepting and cherishing diversity. Easy to say. If you are in the main stream, you belong to a group, you have an identity. If you are different, you don't belong to any group. You are lonely. You cannot define yourself, you have no identity. These things are not easy to digest for a child. So, like the ugly duckling, I pretended to belong and blend, but nobody really took me as one of them. Neither did I.
Still, despite this lack of connection, how and why I was different was not as apparent in those early years of my life. My mom used to tell me that I spoke almost non-stop during the nights in a language that they did not understand. After a few years, especially after starting the elementary school, they had realized that I was repeating the conversations I had made or overheard during the day, but in a very fast fashion. She also told me that after the passing of my dad, my night speeches had come to a stop, and instead, I had started listening to radio during the night while still asleep. You may ask how she realized that I was listening while asleep. Well, at first, she didn't. She thought that I had fallen asleep while listening to the radio. Later on, she understood that I was telling of things from those night broadcasts, even sometimes repeating the exact sentences. Those were the times when my difference from others had started to find some evidence.
This night genius that I was did not show itself at school, to the dismay of my mom. I told you I was different, but not outstanding. My only true friend, who was also truly genius, once had told me that I was a race car that was on constant brakes not to accelerate. She and I were actually best friends. She was shunned for being too successful and intelligent, and she used to stay away from the rest of the students because, she thought, they were not her mental equivalents. So, oddity was our common denominator. We both stood out of the crowd.
When others started dating, she was my only choice, as I was hers. At this point, we were at university. I was going to engineering and she was in the astrophysics. Our relationship took a different turn in the second year of university. Among others astrophysicists, she didn't anymore feel odd, whereas I was still the normal but different guy. I simply couldn't belong in the crowd of engineers. My professors could tell that I was certainly different than others due to my numerous and challenging questions and due to my various divergent thoughts about inventions. Still, I did not stand out as the most intelligent; a fact testified by my low grades in some of my exams. Nevertheless, at that time of my life, I had learned to not care about everything. I was the most original. And I was the one who was in touch with the academics the most. My all-time favorite and only true friend, having found her flock in astrophysics, eventually branched off of my path. Her departure pushed me into a period of deep thought.
A depressive thought, I should say, because things simply did not make sense. My difference from others did not mean anything. I couldn't excel too much, but I didn't fail, either. I couldn't belong, but I could survive everything fine. I was able to see the big picture or grasp minor details, and had built a reputation of producing inventions, but these properties of mine never translated into something tangible. I felt like that cat in the animations who could never catch the mouse despite its most genius plans and who could not be destroyed even with the strongest explosives blasted by the mouse. After all, if you are artificial, anything is possible. You are not real anyway... Was it not for my mom, I could fall into thinking that I am a kind of robotics experiment.
Seeing me in "deep thoughts", one day she told me something about me, which I had never heard before. My conception in her womb, she said, was not normal but truly miraculous. She told that I was in her womb before anything between her and my dad. Fearing the consequences, she had hidden this fact from everybody, including my dad. So, I was the first person ever to learn this peculiarity of mine. Apparently, I was different since the beginning of my existence, let alone my life! Learning this secret spread the seeds of wonder, but also deepened the gap between me and others. Nevertheless, now I had something to work on! Having to do it all by myself was eating me inside, though. I wanted so badly my best friend to be with me.
Busy with finding new exoplanets and alien life signs, my friend was very much into her projects. She, nevertheless, had time to spare for an old friend. We were not intimate, but we still were close enough. When we came together, she started talking about her dreams about visiting, one day, the exoplanets she had studied. Then, one by one, from the most favorite to the least, she started telling about them. Strange thing is, whenever she started talking about one, I completed the rest of the explanation, although I never had any education on the topic. Somehow, that information was flowing from my tongue, just like a natural spring gushing out. My friend, at first, liked the fact that we had not fallen that far, despite the parting of our ways. Later, though, she asked where I had learned all that stuff, to which I had no answer.
As we went on that journey of life, together with my friend again, I started telling her of the stories of my classmates who developed the ideas that I had produced and voiced during the lessons. They had come up with new products and started making a fortune on them. On the positive side, the technology was advancing and the better efficiency of my inventions were helping the environment. I was jealous a bit, yes, but much more than that, I was in a growing feeling of fear of myself. Was I possessed by some kind of scientific genius spirit who was talking through me, you know?
"Maybe you were abducted by the aliens, and were loaded with all that information?" my friend suggested, seeing my worries. That was not possible, because my strangeness had begun even before I was born. Something must have happened much earlier. "Could it be my mom, who was abducted?"
That idea froze both of us in that moment of time. Could I be the child of an alien creature, and helping the human race develop? After all, my mother herself had confessed that my conception in her womb was unnatural, miraculous. What if my eyes, ears and other senses were actually functioning as sensors to transmit information back to my home planet? Why was I speaking during my sleeps in an unknown language anyway? How come could I memorize the radio broadcasts while sleeping? Was it just a coincidence that my best and only friend was an astrophysicist? What about my dad's death? Was he deliberately kept out of my life so that he would not interfere with my diverse interests and divergent thoughts and so that my alien family could exchange as much information as possible with humanity?
My friend broke the freezing silence:
"If they come to take you, I am coming with you, ok?"
"Are you sure?" I replied.
"Sure of what?"
"Coming with me to my alien planet."
"How come you know it? I thought of saying it, but didn't."
"No, I am sure I heard you say it..."
"I. Did. Not."
That was when she and I realized my alien identity for a fact. But of course, alien there on earth, not here. With you all, I feel home, at last.
You may ask why it was so hard for me to acknowledge my differences, given that nowadays there is so much emphasis on accepting and cherishing diversity. Easy to say. If you are in the main stream, you belong to a group, you have an identity. If you are different, you don't belong to any group. You are lonely. You cannot define yourself, you have no identity. These things are not easy to digest for a child. So, like the ugly duckling, I pretended to belong and blend, but nobody really took me as one of them. Neither did I.
Still, despite this lack of connection, how and why I was different was not as apparent in those early years of my life. My mom used to tell me that I spoke almost non-stop during the nights in a language that they did not understand. After a few years, especially after starting the elementary school, they had realized that I was repeating the conversations I had made or overheard during the day, but in a very fast fashion. She also told me that after the passing of my dad, my night speeches had come to a stop, and instead, I had started listening to radio during the night while still asleep. You may ask how she realized that I was listening while asleep. Well, at first, she didn't. She thought that I had fallen asleep while listening to the radio. Later on, she understood that I was telling of things from those night broadcasts, even sometimes repeating the exact sentences. Those were the times when my difference from others had started to find some evidence.
This night genius that I was did not show itself at school, to the dismay of my mom. I told you I was different, but not outstanding. My only true friend, who was also truly genius, once had told me that I was a race car that was on constant brakes not to accelerate. She and I were actually best friends. She was shunned for being too successful and intelligent, and she used to stay away from the rest of the students because, she thought, they were not her mental equivalents. So, oddity was our common denominator. We both stood out of the crowd.
When others started dating, she was my only choice, as I was hers. At this point, we were at university. I was going to engineering and she was in the astrophysics. Our relationship took a different turn in the second year of university. Among others astrophysicists, she didn't anymore feel odd, whereas I was still the normal but different guy. I simply couldn't belong in the crowd of engineers. My professors could tell that I was certainly different than others due to my numerous and challenging questions and due to my various divergent thoughts about inventions. Still, I did not stand out as the most intelligent; a fact testified by my low grades in some of my exams. Nevertheless, at that time of my life, I had learned to not care about everything. I was the most original. And I was the one who was in touch with the academics the most. My all-time favorite and only true friend, having found her flock in astrophysics, eventually branched off of my path. Her departure pushed me into a period of deep thought.
A depressive thought, I should say, because things simply did not make sense. My difference from others did not mean anything. I couldn't excel too much, but I didn't fail, either. I couldn't belong, but I could survive everything fine. I was able to see the big picture or grasp minor details, and had built a reputation of producing inventions, but these properties of mine never translated into something tangible. I felt like that cat in the animations who could never catch the mouse despite its most genius plans and who could not be destroyed even with the strongest explosives blasted by the mouse. After all, if you are artificial, anything is possible. You are not real anyway... Was it not for my mom, I could fall into thinking that I am a kind of robotics experiment.
Seeing me in "deep thoughts", one day she told me something about me, which I had never heard before. My conception in her womb, she said, was not normal but truly miraculous. She told that I was in her womb before anything between her and my dad. Fearing the consequences, she had hidden this fact from everybody, including my dad. So, I was the first person ever to learn this peculiarity of mine. Apparently, I was different since the beginning of my existence, let alone my life! Learning this secret spread the seeds of wonder, but also deepened the gap between me and others. Nevertheless, now I had something to work on! Having to do it all by myself was eating me inside, though. I wanted so badly my best friend to be with me.
Busy with finding new exoplanets and alien life signs, my friend was very much into her projects. She, nevertheless, had time to spare for an old friend. We were not intimate, but we still were close enough. When we came together, she started talking about her dreams about visiting, one day, the exoplanets she had studied. Then, one by one, from the most favorite to the least, she started telling about them. Strange thing is, whenever she started talking about one, I completed the rest of the explanation, although I never had any education on the topic. Somehow, that information was flowing from my tongue, just like a natural spring gushing out. My friend, at first, liked the fact that we had not fallen that far, despite the parting of our ways. Later, though, she asked where I had learned all that stuff, to which I had no answer.
As we went on that journey of life, together with my friend again, I started telling her of the stories of my classmates who developed the ideas that I had produced and voiced during the lessons. They had come up with new products and started making a fortune on them. On the positive side, the technology was advancing and the better efficiency of my inventions were helping the environment. I was jealous a bit, yes, but much more than that, I was in a growing feeling of fear of myself. Was I possessed by some kind of scientific genius spirit who was talking through me, you know?
"Maybe you were abducted by the aliens, and were loaded with all that information?" my friend suggested, seeing my worries. That was not possible, because my strangeness had begun even before I was born. Something must have happened much earlier. "Could it be my mom, who was abducted?"
That idea froze both of us in that moment of time. Could I be the child of an alien creature, and helping the human race develop? After all, my mother herself had confessed that my conception in her womb was unnatural, miraculous. What if my eyes, ears and other senses were actually functioning as sensors to transmit information back to my home planet? Why was I speaking during my sleeps in an unknown language anyway? How come could I memorize the radio broadcasts while sleeping? Was it just a coincidence that my best and only friend was an astrophysicist? What about my dad's death? Was he deliberately kept out of my life so that he would not interfere with my diverse interests and divergent thoughts and so that my alien family could exchange as much information as possible with humanity?
My friend broke the freezing silence:
"If they come to take you, I am coming with you, ok?"
"Are you sure?" I replied.
"Sure of what?"
"Coming with me to my alien planet."
"How come you know it? I thought of saying it, but didn't."
"No, I am sure I heard you say it..."
"I. Did. Not."
That was when she and I realized my alien identity for a fact. But of course, alien there on earth, not here. With you all, I feel home, at last.
