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He was too human for Vulcans and too vulcan for Humans. Thus, on Vulcan, he found himself all too human; thus, in Starfleet and on Earth, he found himself all too vulcan.
Among Vulcans, he was crassly emotional to the point of offensiveness. He was given a wide berth because nobody knew quite what to expect from him, because he was emotional and he was not usual and he caused new problems for everybody to clean up wherever he went. It went beyond the emotional; he did not have the same physical stamina as his peers. He was a failed experiment, proof that there was a limit to how much Vulcans and Humans could logically integrate; an embarrassment to the Ambassador’s hopes of cooperation. He fell behind in lessons, both academic and sporting classes. He worked five times as hard for half of the result, and ten times as hard to become the best. He fought to become the best because if he would always be distinguished from those around him, he wished to be distinguished in ways that were positive rather than merely negative or, at best, neutral. Authority and kinship figures spoke distantly and firmly to him, trying to help him as best they knew. It made him feel like a problem. It made him feel very alone. Or, rather, he felt like a problem, and he felt very alone, and this was a problem related to the fact that he was very alone.
Among humans, he was coldly logical to the same point of offensiveness. His physical strength was dangerous. His perceived lack of emotion was something to be feared, and the ways he experienced or did not experience the concepts of ‘empathy’ and ‘sympathy’ left him outcast, a danger and outsider even when he was an officer of Starfleet. He was regarded as though he believed himself and his ways superior, when he believed that all difference was to be respected, but he couldn’t deny he grated uncomfortably against the ways most humans preferred to do things.
When he was a child, his mother read him Alice in Wonderland. When he was an adolescent, he read himself Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.
His meltdowns were a problem everywhere.
He knew, logically, that the perspectives or others changed depending on who they were, not what who he was was changing whenever he became in different company. He felt, emotionally, that whoever was around him, he would never and could never be acceptable to them by their standards.
Except with Jim. Jim called him ‘vulcan’ as a compliment. Jim called him ‘human’ as a compliment. Jim did not think there was a contradiction between these two. When Spock had a meltdown, Jim asked him later what had gone wrong, and he really wanted to know so that they could change things to have a better environment for Spock in place. Not to change Spock, to change the environment.