Thinking I Was Wrong Was the Mistake

This memory really wants to be a novel, but for the Poets & Storytellers United challenge I'll try to make it a sonnet. Sort of. A modern sonnet.

Elsewhere on this blog I've shared some stories about times when I made stupid mistakes, through the usual sources of stupidity, carelessness, selfishness, laziness, etc., and had to go back and fix them. Or when it was too late to fix them. Or when I still don't know whether there's a way they could have been fixed, or avoided.

This, however, is a true variation on the classic theme of "I once thought I was wrong--but that was a mistake." 

People my age weren't allowed to celebrate being introverts as the gift it is, when we were young. It actually took me years, even in Washington, to peel back the layers of miseducation and recognize that Highly Sensory Perceptive introverts are my people. That color, ethnicity, age, sex, even religious background have much less influence on my personal relationships than perceptivity has. 

I was unhappy because I was mourning.

Happiness being a duty, not a pleasure,

In that church, the church college whirred with warning.

I ought to change myself, to seek no leisure.

I tried to change myself, without surcease.

I tried to fit into some happy crowd,

Seek popularity instead of peace;

I found the crowds were vulgar, dull, and loud.

Running and running, hamster in its wheel,

I saw how all the people I liked best

Were nagged incessantly for the same reason:

The difference between us and them was real.

I found my tribe, that shining golden season,

And from faultfinders found my lifelong rest.