Love

When I was 15, I wrote an essay on Love and broke the record. My teacher loved it so much, she read it to the entire school and several other schools nearby.

So it was very painful just 3 years later I cut contact with everyone again, even my best friends.

It's hard to explain this because it doesn't seem like a problem for everyone, idealization feels just as dehumanizing as devaluation. But yes, if you were a gifted kid, you might be familiar with the concept. That you are valued, but not as a whole person. Or if you are known as a cool kid for carrying spray paints and drawing graffiti all over school walls, those boys don't actually want to know if you have other hobbies too. Even if there are 1 or 2 people do care about you genuinely, when you live in that environment for too long, you would probably assume they don't value you as much. What you want is not another compliment, but someone curious enough to want to see you for who you are.

It wasn't so much avoidance that I ran the hell out of the country at 20. It was the conclusion that I would never be understood.