The Knowing

By thirteen, I knew something about me was different.

Not in a way I could explain. Not in a way that fit neatly into words. It was just a knowing a constant, low hum beneath everything else. While other kids were worried about fitting in, about clothes or popularity or what they looked like in the mirror, I was paying attention to things that didn’t show up on the surface.

I noticed shifts in rooms the moment I walked into them. I could feel when someone was angry before they spoke, when sadness hung heavy behind a smile, when fear lived quietly in someone’s silence. Emotions weren’t just expressions to me they were atmospheres. They clung to spaces. They lingered.

I didn’t just see people.

I felt them.

At the same time, my own body and mind were changing in ways that felt confusing and overwhelming. Puberty came with its own noise restlessness, uncertainty, emotions that spiked without warning. But even that felt layered, like I was processing my own changes while also carrying the emotional weight of everyone around me.

It was exhausting.

I became hyper-aware of things most people never noticed. A cold spot in a room. A sudden pressure behind my eyes. The feeling of being watched without there being anyone there. These moments didn’t happen constantly, but when they did, they stopped me in my tracks.

I didn’t tell anyone.

By then, I understood what happened when you talked about things people couldn’t see. They either laughed, dismissed it, or tried to explain it away. So I learned to keep it quiet. To observe without reacting. To feel without showing it.

That awareness extended beyond the living world too.

There were moments brief, fleeting where it felt like something else was brushing against my perception. Not always frightening. Sometimes curious. Sometimes heavy with emotion I couldn’t identify as my own. It was the same sense I’d felt years earlier with Mandy, and even before that with the glowing green man.

Different forms. Same presence.

I started to understand there were things moving through the world that existed just outside of what most people were willing or able to acknowledge. Things unseen but not unfelt. And somehow, I was tuned into that frequency.

That realization came with a kind of loneliness I wasn’t prepared for.

Knowing things others couldn’t feel didn’t make me special.

It made me isolated.

It made conversations feel shallow, even when I cared deeply about the people having them. I felt older than I was, heavier than I should have been at thirteen.

While others were discovering who they wanted to be, I was realizing who I already was and that scared me.

Because once you understand that you’re different, truly different, there’s no going back to pretending you’re not.

I didn’t yet know what to do with that awareness. I only knew that it wasn’t going away. It was sharpening. Growing. Waiting for something.

And deep down, beneath the confusion and the changes and the quiet fear, I felt the same pull I’d felt my whole life.

The sense that I was being prepared.

For what, I didn’t know yet.

But something in me already understood that this awareness wasn’t a gift meant to be ignored.

It was a calling.