Things have been bad recently. They say it's life. One moment, everything seemed almost bearable in general, and I could immerse myself further in delusions, and then suddenly everything went wrong at the same time. Life reminds me of some twisted fantasy horror story where one enters a room and sees a beautiful room, only for it to turn ugly with rotten walls in the blink of an eye.
I spent most of last night crying so much that when I woke up this morning my eyes were red and puffy, and no amount of make-up could conceal it - I tried. I had to go to work looking so rough that I felt the need to make up an excuse, saying I'd gone out drinking too much the night before. I'm finding work less and less bearable, to the point that today I had to rush outside the office to stop myself from bursting into tears. The feeling of being trapped inside some twisted parallel universe has never felt so strong. And then as I sat outside and lit up a cigarette, trying hard to puff away the rain of tears swelling inside my chest, I strange 'illumination' dawned on me.
This impression of being trapped in some horrible parallel dimension is not an impression for me. It's a reality, the only one my brain is able to perceive. Something is missing inside my head, or brain, that has always made me unable to relate fully to the world. I have no capacity to 'socialise' the way regular people do, and what's more, I don't have the capacity to form bonds or what we call relationships because I don't have the thing that develops in most people's brains that allows them on a conscious level to connect to others and their environment the way regular, healthy human beings do.
My inability to connect or form connections with people is the equivalent of hearing sounds but never having the extra piece of 'software' in the brain to connect the sounds to the notion of words. I can only relate by using my rational part of the brain, which happened to develop perhaps even more so to make up for the other missing part to cope or survive. But what it really means is that I am unable to connect to other human beings except on an intellectual level - hence why I've always been obsessed with finding 'depth' in others... that 'depth' is actually a translation for my inability to relate or connect to anyone unless the connection is based on an intellectual level... because that's all that I have. The rest, what could be generally summed up as humane connection/socialisation - I don't have it. It's like a glitch in the brain, or something.
It's not about feeling awkward around people, or being shy. I not only feel all that, but the reason I do is because I'm never able to 'read' people's social clues. They go right over my head for the most part, and the ones I've learned to read are so few, and yet took me years to 'get'. I spend most of my time watching people when having to interact with them wondering how I'm supposed to respond, and usually I'll just run scripts in my head and pick out the one that has what I think may be the best outcome statistically speaking. Sometimes I'll just mirror people, or try to - very clumsily. That means I'll observe people and like monkey-say, monkey-do, I'll try my luck rather than remain completely lost and disconnected from people who interact with me outside the sphere of intellectual talk, which corresponds to the only developed faculty my mind could use to build a bridge and allow me to connect socially at least on one level rather than none.
My obsession with certain topics are also another give-away of some kind of neural impairment. I have something close to an obsessive-compulsive need to analyse and over analyse the same things over and over again, and guess what they always revolve around? Society, social topics, people, language... all the very things linked to what's missing in me to make the connection.
I live inside a mind that never stops analysing things over and over again, zooming in on a tiny thing and just never stopping. It's so full-on that the only way I found to keep myself from feeling like my mind is exploding is to write down my thoughts. When I say write down, I'm not talking about a couple of pages now and then. One diary can reach over 100,000 words in less than 3 months. I've checked it (that was easy, I write on word documents so I get the word count at the click of mouse). Last year alone, I filled perhaps 4 diaries in total, each spanning a period of around 2 or 3 months - and the only reason I don't keep one diary and split them into parts is because after a couple of months I reach the equivalent of a book, except all there is are thoughts, thoughts, more thoughts. Non stop. My other blog consists mostly of extracts I would select out of all the endless writing of thoughts.
My inability to connect normally with others on a social level is also coupled with an innate avoidance of touch. I've lost count how many times it simply felt weird to be touched by someone, even just to feel someone's hand brush my arm by accident. It feels weird and alien to me, and I naturally avoid it. My mother told me that I used to dislike physical contact ever since I was a tiny baby and that it used to make her sad at times because she always wanted to cuddle me, but I'd just push her away.
When outside in the street, I need music in my ears not because I'm bored or really enjoying listening to music. I put music in my ears to have something I can relate to, because music was always the one thing I felt I could relate to, and feel touched, or moved by. Listening to music especially in the middle of busy streets and faceless crowds of people is especially soothing because suddenly this alien world in front of me I cannot relate to or connect with is erased and I can remain in my own inner world undisturbed. I'll even avoid people from work outside when I get out of the office just to stay alone and lose myself in music.
All this detail came back to me after I spoke with my mother last night. She said to me she was sorry I had inherited her strangeness, that she could see I was afflicted by the same strange things she went through. She then went on to tell me how disconnected she was as a child, including not speaking for months at a time even at school. She would avoid social interaction at all costs most of the time, instead retreating alone to just be in her head, you know. As she grew into an adult, she never managed to really have relationships, and now simply stays alone.
We are both so socially dysfunctional and unable to connect on that level that so many people take for granted because, hey, it's supposed to be just 'normal'...
Things are getting worse for me. The pull inside my head to switch off and stop trying to 'connect' is so strong, but now that I realise that I really have some kind of disorder, I also realise that all these past years I was looking for answers to my sense of loss and disconnection... now I can stop trying and accept that I'm the way I am, and make the most of whatever it is that makes me. So what if I have a glitch in my brain that prevents me from ever experiencing a real bond or relationship with people. So what if I can only relate through the intellectual side of my brain?
It also explains why I cannot control my emotions. I cannot even relate to them, the only way I 'relate' is by intellectualising them. Beyond that, I am at loss, unable to really control them, left to feel as though there's this mixture of magma inside that keeps erupting randomly. The worst part is that I constantly misread people, especially in person. I find it a bit easier in writing. Hence why I love writing so much, perhaps. It makes things so much easier for my mind to understand or connect.
I had this strange 'revelation' dawn on me today, although I probably fail to explain it clearly enough, but never mind. The strange thing is that it feels now as if I was staring at the obvious all along, but I kept trying to become 'normal' in the sense that I never realised that I was always missing a 'pathway' somewhere in my brain that could allow me to relate and connect the way regular people do.
I can let go now that I understand... and actually start exploring this strange way of experiencing the world my 'impairment' has left me with.
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