02/12/2025
Read & Inspire: 19. The Space Between
The hilltop has become my refuge, where the city sprawls beneath me in miniature perfection. Tonight, the sky bleeds orange and purple across the horizon, transforming ordinary buildings into silhouettes of something almost magical. Up here, the world feels manageable. Unlike the sprawling chaos of everything waiting below.
"Stop overthinking everything," my sister says constantly, rolling her eyes when I hesitate before speaking in class or freeze when the teacher asks me to read aloud. She doesn't understand that my brain moves differently, that words tangle themselves into knots before they reach my mouth, that simple questions sometimes feel like impossible puzzles.
The school counsellor uses phrases like "anxiety disorder" and "learning differences," but those words feel like another way of saying broken. Another label separating me from kids who raise their hands without fear, who finish tests with time to spare, who don't spend lunchtimes hiding in the library.
From up here, the city lights begin their nightly transformation. Thousands of windows illuminate simultaneously, each representing lives I'll never know. I wonder if anyone down there feels like I do – constantly translating the world into a language everyone else speaks fluently.
Today was particularly brutal. Maths test returned with another disappointing grade despite hours of studying. Mr. Patterson's face tightening with that familiar disappointment. Whispered comments from classmates wondering why I'm "still in the top class" when I clearly don't belong.
But something about this view shifts my perspective. The city doesn't care about test scores or reading speeds. It simply exists, vast and indifferent and somehow comforting. The sunset doesn't judge. The river reflects light equally for everyone.
My therapist talks about reframing – finding different ways to interpret situations. Maybe struggling doesn't mean failing. Maybe taking longer doesn't mean being less. Maybe my brain's different pathways lead somewhere valuable, even if the journey looks nothing like everyone else's.
The orange deepens into twilight. Soon I'll head home to homework that will take twice as long as it should, to explanations I'll struggle to articulate, to the constant exhausting work of appearing normal.
But for now, I sit above a burning city and remember that different doesn't mean diminished. That my pace is still forward motion. That sometimes, you need to climb high enough to see yourself as one small part of something infinitely larger.
The first stars emerge. I take a breath that doesn't hurt.
Tomorrow will be hard. But tonight, I have this sunset, this view, this moment of belonging to something too vast to judge me.
And somehow, that's enough.
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