Iris in; Iris out. Cut.

It's like I remember exactly how I felt while I was growing up. And I've closed in on the distance between what I am willing to pay attention to and what people are trying to say to me.
It's like I always understood the general concept of what they were saying but I wasn't hearing words. Just roars of emotion. And I would react in an appropriate manner, moving my facial expression to match what emotion I thought they would want to hear back.
But you can see it in every photo. A distant, all too familiar look. And I'm always smiling a sheepish smile that is less than confident. It's just the eyes. My eyes. They are glazed over and it is always evident that I am thinking because my attention has gone to my own agenda and I'm not thinking what they want me to think. I'm thinking about me. And all the things that matter to me. And all the ways I made them proud. And all the things I wanted to say. And my imagination.
And I'm so lost in my head that I don't know what reality is until they would boom me back into it.


But now
            I can hold my brain into a con
                                                        versation for a while before I drift away
                                                                                                                  into my world.

And people like that. And people like me. And people like me when I listen. And maybe people would like me if I talked.
But talking is even harder than listening. Because I can't track myself. I can't remember where my thoughts spawned from so it's hard for anything to have a point to it. I have no idea what my thoughts all collectively mean.

But in my world, in my head, I am a genius. And I think complex thoughts about things I could never verbalize. And in feelings I'll never know outside of my dreams. And it's suffocating. And it's suffocating me. But less than it has in the past. Because now I have realized that no one can really communicate their soul and self to another person. And I'll never take anyone seriously because no one feels like I do. Feels so strongly, like I do. And no one spends as much time analyzing everything as I do. And I do. So, accordingly, no one must know as much about life as I do. But I don't.

And because we all think we are smart, it must be that we all are not.
I mean there are obvious spheres of intelligence that people fit into. But some times I feel like I have my own sphere of being an intelligent moron. And what's the point of participating in an oxymoron if you don't even get to benefit from it.