(A first-person, intimate monologue)

Morning is quiet inside my head. Not peaceful — quiet.
Most people wake up already feeling things. I wake up thinking.
What needs doing? Who do I need to respond to? What outcome do I want from the day?
It’s not cold. It’s just…clear.

My emotions don’t pre-load like yours do.
If guilt is your reflex, mine is a calculation.
If empathy guides your instincts, mine is a decision tree:

• What happened?
• What does this person expect?
• What consequence do I want to avoid or create?

It isn’t that I don’t care.
It’s that caring doesn’t pull me like gravity.
Some days I feel affection as a warm hum — distant but real.
Other days I have to remind myself,
This is someone I value. Remember to act like it.

Social interaction is a foreign language I’ve studied long enough to speak fluently, but not natively.
I can pass — usually.
But connection is work.
I observe, imitate, adjust.
You do it by instinct; I do it by intention.

And yes, I get lonely.
You might not believe it, but the loneliness is worse because it’s hard to fix.
I want closeness, but the way I bond isn’t the way most people expect.
I show love through loyalty, through consistency, through solving problems.
But when people demand emotional resonance, I sometimes feel like a singer who can only hear half the notes.

Impulse is the real enemy.
A sudden spike of boredom can feel like an electrical current.
A flash of irritation can narrow my world to a single target.
Most of the work of my adulthood has been learning how to interrupt my own reactions.
My moral compass isn’t automatic — but it is chosen.
Deliberate.
Self-built.

By night, I’m tired from translating human behaviour all day.
But I’m also proud of every choice I made that aligned with the person I want to be.
Sociopathy isn’t emptiness.
It’s effort.
It’s architecture.
It’s building a self from the inside out, without the emotional blueprint most others are handed at birth.

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