So what is it? Well, this:

I look around me and feel like I'm surrounded by kids, but they're my age. That sounds condescending, nasty, and arrogant...but let me explain.

They're having fun, laughing, indulging in one another like children, not in terms of intellectual faculties (sometimes emotional, but not often). In any way, I envy people my age who can still indulge like that: they seem so genuinely pleased with others, with their straits in things.

People I know have told me I've changed somehow. They seem sad. I can't understand why. Example, I see college for what it is and accept it's flaws and merits whole. Same with friendship. It is a resource to be used on occasion, requiring reciprocal bonding and exchanges. It sounds as though I've taken emotion out of it, but I haven't...one just objectives the subjective and you've got an odd mixture.

I used to be sad being by myself. Now I prefer it by and large. No annoying commentaries, noone making affirmations about life-long friendships spent together.

No bullshit is what it comes down to.

I am sick of walking through the effervescent dreams of others, just seeing energy and youth wasted on frivolous exchanges like dandelion pods against the wind. I feel like this is high school still. I wanted something more from my friends than just physical affection and worthless pleasantries. Even intellectual conversations are so God damned predictable I don't even bother.

Almost all conversations are predictable. I can analyze and deconstruct a person's personality and interests in a matter of seconds. It's what I do. I'm left wondering if I'm blind for having my head shoved up my rectum too far or, if maybe, I'm just some strange genetic or societal artifact.

I don't feel depressed...I don't feel angsty...or neutral. I'm good, content, calm. I've just accepted things, odd things...the idea that I'm an individual and everyone else is, but that everyone and thing is made up of the same composite matter, interacting with itself in an infinite number of finitely predictable ways.

I see patterns of letters and numbers in and around people. I don't know if this is angst or madness, and I'm not sure I'd care if either was shown to me on a piece of paper. With acceptance comes peace, and that's what it is. It's peace without joy, following what you feel in your heart. But the heart is a path, not a vessel of emotion.

I will typically receive the following in response to this: condemnation at my pseudo-intellectual perspective, concern about my delving in a depression or that there's something wrong in my life, confusion, that I need to feel joy in life, or anything else that relates to positively counteracting what must obviously be negative self reflection.

Maybe I am clinically out there. I am a beggar with food in his stomach, idly looking at people passing back and forth. People want to put a coin in my cup, but I smile and shake my head. They stop by and ask my story. I tell them. A few sit by me for awhile in their nice clothes, just enjoying my time. I see them on occasion, smile, wave, maybe have them sit in the dirt for a bit or for awhile.

Another analogy: I'm just so...inwardly focused, it's hard to see how I affect others, though I know I affect others. It's like moving through a crowd of people pilfering pockets here and inserting watches or money there...but with no eyes.

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