"Well, you don't look like a fool".

I'm going to analyse. I think that I'm catching dyslexia.

Ah, well. When you said that, I didn't know what you meant. Reassurance, because I'm just a silly little middle class girl? I feel, sometimes, like shouting, "I'm not! I'm not." I fear that you don't like me, because I think you're awesome, as I always do, for all the reasons that I'm not. Perfect control, the ability to make everyone laugh and to do well under pressure. The way that you bounce around, completely unafraid of being yourself, and silence everyone with a word. Assonance and alliteration, you know it all and I'm just trailing in the wake and fearing that I'm coming up far short. I like sitting and laughing at you at the back, with everyone else- I'm the canned laughter, I'm a wonderful audience but I just can't take the stage as you do, especially when you're there. I can't impress when I most want to. I clam up and stop, or do a poor imitation of you; I'm like a chameleon, I take on colours but I'm never the exact replication and you can find me out if you look hard enough, there are cracks close up. It's really just mimicking. You like people to look like fools; you play the fool, but you never are, you're always in perfect control and it's a paradox, or a palindrome; the same backwards or the opposite but true? I think paradox. Opposite but true. "No need to worry about being the most ridiculous person in here, 'cos that's always me, right?" Ha.

Is it true that you despise most the characteristics that you fear are present in yourself? I abhor one girl. She's disgusting, pleading and vile, strums for sympathy and throws tantrums when she doesn't get it. She knows everything whilst knowing nothing. See, I know things, but they're useless things, like the multiples of thirteen and the first sentence of 1984. They aren't practical. She thinks that she knows the practical things, but she doesn't. I hate strumming for sympathy, and I rarely do, I hope. It's one of my few virtues. Or am I sycophantic here? I am pitiful, but it's for noone's consumption except my own. I'm force feeding myself my own emotional crapulence. Or at work? I tell people that I think their work is excellent, when I admire them. I haven't told her properly yet. So I don't really think that I know everything. I don't think that I'm a tantrum thrower. I fear that I'm weak.

Brilliance is such an elusive trait.