Kenneth Pike Another one is dead today. He killed himself - everyone wonders why. Straight 'A' student, NHS member. "Always so quiet." At least he didn't take anyone with him, like last time... Is this all we are to you? Dead students? How many times have you made your judgements without looking into the mind of the victim? Too many times! Too many dead... We are children of the shadows, the light in a dark society (but the darkest of the light). You know us as "nerds," that kid sitting in the front row in school. Never have you so much as troubled yourself to sit and get to know us. So allow me now to show you our world. Our world is one we enter at an early age. At first, many consider our precocity a gift - we a plopped into classes for the "gifted," known privately as the "socially inept." Secretly, our "gifts" become a burden; too much is expected, too little given. We eventually choose separate paths to the same goal - the unyielding quest for knowledge. By adolesence, you find us emotionless, cold. But in truth we are even more vulnerable than you. Ours is a road we choose not willingly, but out of neccesity. We are cursed with intelligence, and to hide that is to lose it in part, to sacrifice ourselves to avoid being an outcast. Many of us are rooted up in that manner. None of us were ever children, for we never bothered to learn how. We boast no lovers, for none dare love us. We show no feeling for to do so is to admit weakness; one thing we cannot bring ourselves to do. Do not shun us because we are not of your world! Our place is a lonely one, but we wall ourselves thus for a reason. Had we bared ourselves to your harsh treatment at an early age, we would have been destroyed; now, we are held by a prison of our own making. More than anything, we lust. Our hunger for something new is insatiable. We seek emotion; power, pleasure and pain. To feel is to be; besides, feeling fills that void that gnaws at us eternally, created by a lifetime of misunderstanding. We cultivate sadness and harm those around us - and revel in it. Some of us go mad with power, manipulating others sadistically. Others find false happiness, then destroy themselves searching for more. Occasionally, we find what we seek - the purity of love. For love is the only force which can pierce our souls and open the gates within. We become obsessed with it - a person or the idea it matters not, the result is the same. We are capable of incredible passion and absolute control - simultaneously. Our love goes far beyond the physical world, but rarely do we find one to share it with. If love cannot be found, power alone becomes solace for many. The few gifted with some charisma rise above others as leaders of whole societies - and bring down many when they fall. Power without love destroys. When neither love nor power are obtained, we turn to the greatest emotion of all - the exhiliration of oblivion. Take your pick of vices, the how is irrelevant.. the result is the same. Because we hunger, we are ridiculed. Because we are ridiculed, we wall ourselves away. Because we cannot escape those walls, we begin to crave some peace, any peace. And that craving is unstoppable. So I admonish you who have forever been among the mainstream populous - attack us no longer. If you prick us, we will bleed. If you love us, it shall be requitted. If you attack us... nothing. Until, that is, you have pushed us off our precarious perch. Then, we will destroy ourselves, and take you along for the ride. You who have left this tiny fold of ours, I would beg your return or, if you cannot, then your advocacy. There are so very few of us, now. Would that it were not so. And if you still are one of us, do not destroy yourself, and do not make that exodus into the light. There are so few of our kind now; I can give you, my brothers and sisters, no better reason than that. Be proud of your curse, wear it like a scarlet letter upon your chest. Do this and I promise - one way or another, you shall be loved. From what I hear, there is nothing more satisfying. So while we are on this earth, let us live; perhaps one day our sacrifices will pay off, and we'll see if love is as good as they say.