The secret of how to live without resentment or embarrassment in a world in which I was different from everyone else. was to be indifferent to that difference.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I honestly felt no envy or resentment, only astonishment at how much of a world there was out there and how much of it others already knew. The agenda for self-cultivation that had been set for my classmates by their teachers and parents was something I'd have to develop for myself.
I was not afraid of what I did not like. To overcome dislike of a thing often satisfied one's feeling of honour.
I was afraid of not living up to what people expected me to be.
I prided myself on being unflappable even in the most chaotic of circumstances.
Playing Christ, I began to feel shut away from the world. A newspaper became one of my biggest luxuries. I noticed that some of my close friends began treating me with reverence.
A lot of my personality was informed by feeling very different in the world I grew up in, feeling that I didn't fully belong, that my parents didn't belong.
I felt ashamed of being different and ashamed of feeling that way.
There was no way to laugh anymore, to love, to care, and there was a sense of guilt in having survived when others had been killed. I turned into a worse workaholic than I had already been by trying to work myself into the ground.
I wanted to be left alone to live my life, so it was very easy for people to pretend that they were me.
Growing up, I just wanted to be like everyone else. I didn't value or understand the beauty in being different at the time in my life.
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