I laugh when I’m ner­vous. Especially around girls I’m attracted to — total gig­gle­fest. I also laugh uncon­trol­lably around peo­ple I meet for the first time. People lower their guard when there’s laugh­ter, and I sus­pect my mind sub­con­sciously finds humour in every­thing to put peo­ple at ease around me.

Around peo­ple I hate, I’m dead silent. That’s how you know I don’t like you: if I don’t talk. The mere pres­ence of one of these peo­ple forces me to fully con­cen­trate on not drilling a 4-inch hole in my tem­ple with a cord­less DeWalt.

Pat’s dif­fer­ent. He told me once that if you ever see him shake his head and shrug his shoul­ders, you’re in his black­list. In an act of faith, he’ll give every­one respect and will even go so far as to stab you in the front, but he gives up if you cross his line of ethics. He’ll never be involved with any­thing related to you after that. It’s not that he hates these peo­ple, like me, he loses all inter­est. This is prob­a­bly even worse than my reac­tion which, because his is cold. You mean noth­ing to him. I try to let go as well, but I can’t. In the back of my head I cling to the hope that these peo­ple can change. Sometimes I also won­der if these peo­ple ever lis­ten to them­selves and can under­stand exactly why I hate them, because it’s so obvi­ous to me.

I also cry in emo­tional sit­u­a­tions. It doesn’t have to be any­thing par­tic­u­larly sad or happy, just a time when emo­tions are high. Intense sports games, Tim Horton’s com­mer­cials, some­times just because some­one else is cry­ing. I can hide it pretty well though; peo­ple don’t under­stand if you start cry­ing in a seem­ingly innocu­ous situation.

As frus­trat­ing as these emo­tional reac­tions can be, I know they make me who I am.

I used to try des­per­ately to remain cere­bral and log­i­cal — like Pat — but my emo­tions would always get the bet­ter of me. Now I’ve learned to embrace them. I could only do this after accept­ing myself and becom­ing con­tent with who I am. They give me some­thing Pat doesn’t have: intense inspi­ra­tion. That rush, when your stom­ach churns, when your head is burns, when you heart flutters.

They’re a part of me, and they make me who I am.