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It is always painful to recall that I was rejected because I was a loser. For some years, I put it down to prejudice, but now I know it was simply because I was the archetypal geek, forever derided.

I tell people I have embraced my inner nerd these days, but I don’t think you ever really get over people continually mocking you for some character of your face or form. I don’t know how to overcome my form. I don’t know what it is that others see in me that makes them respond in kind.

Perhaps the path I have walked for twenty-five years is mere escapism for me. Perhaps it was my reprieve. By becoming an oddity and curiosity amongst strangers, perhaps I could subsume my geek identity into my overarching eccentric convert persona.

I think my only consolation is that my Lord has granted me a companion who sees none of that in me. I feel blessed to have been introduced to that woman from a land thousands of miles away, who found in me something she could love.

It pains me all the family gatherings I have missed and the meetings of friends, which I shunned knowing I would be the perennial misfit. I guess other geeks drown their sorrows in alcohol. I simply seek refuge in this foreign path, forever mine, seeking refuge in the One.

I choose instead to do as commanded. To walk humbly on the earth and reply: “Peace!”