Sometimes, it seemed the hardest thing in the world to grow up Fae. I know everyone thinks that they had it rough, but I wondered sometimes if I were going to make it...

The simplest things for everyone else can sometimes be more than I can handle.  I feel like my senses get cross-wired, and I can't sort out the information trying to get in. Have you ever *heard* light? It took me the longest time growing up to realize that not everyone could. I finally figured it out about the time I realized that not everyone could *see* music.

It didn't go away as I got older. I just learned not to mention it. What might be tolerated as "cute" and "imaginative" in a child just might end you up on some pretty heavy prescription drugs as an adult. I have always had artistic leanings, and this helps alot. It is amazing what people will forgive the "creative" mind. Very often it is my *different* way of looking at thing that attracts people to me, but for many it becomes frustrating when they realize that this is a full time thing. It doesn't go away, and I can't turn it off. It starts out, "I love you because you don't think like anyone I've ever met" to "You're #%$^ing CRAZY!" ::shrug:: Some people just can't make up their minds.

Emotions don't quite work for me the way they do for most, either. As one fellow Fae put it: for us, emotions are *things*... not just something abstract. It doesn't take much to tug at my heartstrings. I used to hate walking home from school after a rainshower as a child, because all the snails would crawl up onto the sidewalk, and everytime one of the other children took delight in the crunching noise they made when stepped on, I had to stifle the urge to scream. I could never stand to see anyone getting picked on....

Some of the people in my life now don't understand why I am so often sad. I took the name "Nalissi", for it means "sweet tears" in Tolkien Elvish. I am not one to walk around in a constant state of morbid depression, but I feel a Sorrow in everything I do. I am able to celebrate life, and take joy from the Moments I am able to share with loved ones, but underneath it all there is a sadness. Part of it is a longing for a Home far from here in ways not measured by any distance, but sometimes I am sad simply because Sorrow exists. It is just my way.

Finding others who understood was the greatest gift the Universe could ever have bestowed. Not all Fae think or feel exactly like me, but at least they understand what it is to be so different from those around you. They Understand, and they Accept. That, and Believing, are, to me, the greatest treasures shared friends.