It usually happened this way. The rain was falling steadily from a gray sky, and I was walking nonchalantly around the parking lot of the dorms at my college. This was the only time I could ever get peace, the only time when there were few people about and I could go out and just be myself. A lot of people hate the rain, but I like it. It drives people indoors, but it pulls me out.

I passed the volleyball court and the student building where a few stragglers were watching TV or on the computers. The forest was right across the street…only a few feet to salvation, to a nice escape into the damp, wondrous world of nature, into my domain. I studied it from my position, as the rain fell down on my soon-to-be soaked body. But it didn’t matter. Clothes were clothes to me in the rain, and if they got wet, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, not even life. Well…at least sometimes.

It was hard to be the thing I was. Going to college, being force to live in the dorms by parents who think you need to “get out on your own”. Trying to maintain sanity when, really, there is no real way to do so, especially when you’re one of those things that need nature to survive, and can’t exactly hang around humanity for too long without getting some thoughts about running away, never coming back, or just thinking that these people will eventually drive you crazy. You know you don’t belong in human society, but in nature…

But you get used to it. Sort of. Being raised alongside humanity, and trying to be human…it helps. But there’s always that part of you, the true part that is what you really are, and what you are meant to be, that needs the forest, the sounds of the earth, with no human intrusion…the true silence that is the magic of nature, knowing that this is how life should be, a peaceful situation, instead of constantly wondering how and when you’ll get away from humanity, and take some time in your true home, in nature…

These feelings didn’t always occur. I use to live in a place that was pretty much nothing but woods. But when my family moved, and I had nowhere to go, no nature, I learned something about myself, and I found out that nature is an intricate part of me, and if I’m not near it, don’t get to spend time in it, I go crazy…very. You can’t deprive someone like me of nature. You just can’t. It’s like taking a modern human and throwing them into a time without the technology there is today…no plumbing, lighting, TV, no easy access to food…it’s like taking a human away from that and making them suffer and have to conform to a new world, where they’ll most likely die anyway because they’re too used to the 21st century. It kind of like that. You take me from nature, and I get overwhelmed by society, and though I doubt I’ll die because of it, I will go crazy, lose my sanity to some extent…become a very feral, scared being, because this is not where I belong.

That’s my life sometimes. Other times, I feel fine in society, though I never get out much. I prefer to be by myself, away from humanity. Participating in escapism, I guess, melting into my “fantasy” world of video games, writing, and books where things are better, and I don’t have to think about the world I don’t belong in.

It probably sounds crazy. But that’s just me. I can survive in society, but not for long, without losing my mind…that’s just how it is for me. I’m not meant to be in a town full of humans…rather in nature, the woods…

In that place across the street. My salvation, where no one can reach me, and where I can enter without anyone really seeing me.

The forest. That place where beings thrown into the wrong world can go and find some peace for themselves, even if it is temporary. A world where those who feel lost and alone can go and find solace and others who can relate. It’s a place where few can go and feel the life and safety that is nature. It my place, my home, and the only one I ever feel like I can turn to in this life and get comfort from a world where I really don’t belong.

I know things will change for me one day. A day that’s got to be years into the future. But at least where I am now, there are at least forests where I can run to when I’m feeling lost in this world. A world that is, to most eyes, a wonderful place, but to me, it will never be my true home, nor will I ever truly belong to it.