You were teaching philosophy while everyone else was napping.

Congratulations, you were literally one of the smartest people in the ancient world, and society's response was to be deeply uncomfortable about it. Hypatia of Alexandria was a mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who could out-think virtually everyone in the room, which, historically speaking, did not go great for her. The bar for how the ancient world treated brilliant women was, to put it gently, subterranean.

In this life, you almost certainly have strong opinions about how things should be done, a low tolerance for willful ignorance, and a reputation for being "a lot" among people who simply cannot keep up. You explain things with precision and expect others to follow along. Most of them do not, and you have noticed. You have always noticed. There is a specific look you get when someone misses the point entirely, and the people in your life know that look well and fear it appropriately.

You value knowledge the way other people value oxygen, and you genuinely cannot fathom why everyone else is not the same way. Facts are your love language. Accuracy is non-negotiable. Someone confidently saying something wrong in your presence is basically a personal attack, and your face makes this extremely clear before you have said a single word. You have been told your expressions are "a lot" too. You consider this a feature.

People find you impressive in the way they find a very fast river impressive: full of admiration, slightly nervous, not entirely sure they want to jump in. Your standards are high, your patience for intellectual laziness is essentially zero, and somehow you are still surprised every single time someone disappoints you. The surprise is genuine. Every time. This is both your most relatable quality and your most baffling one.

There is also a certain loneliness that comes with this particular brain configuration, not that you would necessarily use that word for it. It is more that most conversations feel like they are operating at three-quarters speed, and you are too polite to say so out loud, usually. You would rather talk about ideas than feelings, about systems than small talk, and about almost anything rather than whatever trivial thing someone is currently explaining to you as though you have not already understood it, extrapolated its implications, and grown slightly bored.

Hypatia ran a school, corresponded with scholars across the ancient world, and was by all accounts the kind of person other very smart people sought out specifically to feel smarter by proximity. She did not apologize for knowing things. She did not make herself smaller to make a room more comfortable. She was, by every surviving account, completely herself at full volume, which ancient Alexandria handled about as well as you would expect.