I think Im going to write a book and put this in there somewhere. The main character is going to be in an insane asylum in eastern europe somewhere.

I felt above it all. Not in the way a king feels himself above his subjects or a victorious army over a vanquished foe, but rather the way a survived cancer patient feels above the trivialities of gossip or the monotony of the everyday. Finding a way to bottle that feeling was the only thing that mattered, but it never lasted. After a fleeting few moments it was gone, and the wandering thoughts returned… the worries of jobs and futures and relationships and whatever. But for that brief moment in time, when the overarching explosion permeated my thoughts and the very thing that makes my existence worthwhile was cornered and understood, it was perfect.
I spent much of my formative years trying to capture this feeling. Time spent among peers was time spent among a lower class, a group that didn’t “get it” like I did. What was it that I “got?” I can attribute most of my semi-elitist attitudes to a family firmly latched onto the finer things in life: wine, fine dining and stately travel. I took my first trip to Europe in the 5th grade and while the concrete images of the cobblestone streets, softly meandering plazas and slouched, demonstrative buildings have faded significantly into the vast emptiness of space, the feeling pure elation at time spent in a world so immensely different from my own was (and is) unmistakable. So much so that it left an indelible mark, a time-stamp, on my views.
Of course to say I had significantly altered my take on the world-at-large at the ripe age of 11 would be greatly overstating my cognitive abilities. Like all young children I yearned for attention, fought for the admiration of my peers and overstepped my bounds at every possible corner… but the seed had been planted.