You asked me today why I do not laugh.

I found myself unable to give an adequate answer.

It is because I cannot. I find myself simply incapable of emotional displays. It is not that they are hard to me to produce. It is not even that there is no will. If that were the case, then I would simply fake it just to avoid scrutiny. Do you not know what I would give to simply be able to be normal?

I am not normal by human standards.

I am far too bottled up, and cut off. I intimidate humans because of my closed-off, icy demeanour. I even frighten some. Humans are fiery and unpredictable, virtually dripping with an unmatched passion that compares to no other species in the entire galaxy. I am an outcast, thought of to be wholly Vulcan so why do I even try to pretend like I fit in with a largely human crew? A robot, I have been called, a computer. I'm far too logical and have no heart. Oh, but I do. I condescend, humans say, when I am merely stating facts and then I do not understand why people are offended by my truths.

I am not normal by Vulcan standards.

They are cool and and smooth and calm and calculating. They are like ice and water, calm like a river. There is the power, the potential to become a roaring, tumultuous sea, but it is perfectly controlled and forced into an easy, slow flow, like a slowly trickling stream. Vulcans flow downhill and straight, the only logical path. They call me a fool, and believe I am inferior. I am said to be at a 'disadvantage' and I am sometimes treated as the lowest of the low, taken completely and utterly for granted, as if I did not exist.

I am not normal by any standards at all.

I am a hybrid. I have been called a freak of nature. I am the undeserving spawn of a union that was not meant to be. I have no place in the natural order of life. I am a monster. Or so I have been told.

But does no one know what it is like? Is there no sympathy? Does anyone else know what it's like to be constantly at war within yourself. I feel like I'm melting and I'm burning up at the same time. It is a fever with a cold sweat, my existence. It torments me. I do not know what to do, I am lost. This is what it is like to be always teetering on the edge... always out of balance, trying desperately to even the scales. I am melting and I am burning. I am cold and smooth and in control, yet I am fiery and burning and passionately wild. The logic and illogic of it all confounds me.

I try to follow Surak's teachings but I find myself always digressing and making mistakes, slipping up. It is not easy. It is said that Vulcans have stronger emotions than humans and I believe it is true, for I feel a burning in the core of my being that is like none that I have ever sensed from a human. But I find myself unable to control it, like a tamer with no whip against his lion. Am I defective? Is it truly due to my human traits that this is so, or am I simply defective. I cannot ever be sure, and the doubt will be ever pressing on my mind.

So, Jim, I do not laugh. I do not smile or even sigh or shrug or any other human trait of emotional display. I do not allow myself. I cannot. It keeps me in control to seal myself off, to stein that flow of emotions and smother the burning passion. I fear that if I allow myself to feel, to react, to love, to hate, to laugh, to smile, or even to share in a friendship it will be the one final thing that breaks the dam and lets the wildfires run rampant.

A/N: I literally just got up out of bed and wrote this in 20 minutes. That line 'teetering on the edge' just popped into my mind and this form totally out of the blue. I hope it was enjoyable and not too depressing. Oh, and this has nothing to do with 'Observations', really, it's just sort of random.