When I was fourteen, like many other fourteen-year-olds, I started high school. In the most cliché way, I remember first stepping into that big, intimidating building, backpack on, math book in hand. I remember the way my tennis shoes squeaked on the linoleum as I walked to my locker, and the way I kept getting jostled around by strangers. I remember all of the conversations going on around me, all of them fuzzy, like static, in my head.

I remember that I wasn’t as scared as I thought I should be. I knew no one, and I thought that was supposed to terrify me, right? But I remember being more comforted by the fact that I was alone than worried by it. I felt safe because I was a stranger. And most of all, I remember how much that confused me.

Why did I like being so alone?