Once you get to feeling different, it’s hard to stop.

There’s always going to be something, whether it’s the color of your hair or skin or eyes, the way they drive their car, or the way they think of other people…

Everyone is different from you, and if you keep looking you’ll only keep seeing bigger and bigger things…

And after a while you won’t just be different, you’ll be separated.

And that’s the point where I was at.

I knew I’d never find what I was looking for sitting at home, so I spent my free nights out.

Trouble is, when you’re focusing on being different, it’s painful to be around people.  Proximity feels like distance…

So I went out to the social functions, but only the big ones where there was little chance of meeting anyone in particular.

At the time, of course, I didn’t see that with that sort of mindset, I might as well have stayed at home—my unspoken fantasy of being found would have been just as likely there.

I know better now, of course.  If you want someone to look at you, your best option is to start looking at them.

It’s just like not seeing the forest for the trees, but in reverse—you get overwhelmed by the forest and forget there are trees in it.

But I hadn’t found my tree yet, so still I wandered.