I’ve always been an “other.” A child of a bi-polar parent who went to eight different schools during K-12, I was always “that new girl, that other.” Thank God that my crazy parent was also brilliant; she taught me to read at an early age. As a result, I had an escape from the chaos in my life. Other worlds.

As I got older, I learned to play nice with people, to feign extrovertism in order to function in society. I surfaced enough from my interior life to make a very few close friends. But I was still different. Apparently, I was too other (that nerd girl, too smart, etc.) that most guys were afraid to jeopardize their non-otherness to talk to me. When I finally got up the nerve to speak to my future husband (another other) in high school, I was able to express my uniqueness enough to…