20/11/2011

It's past 3am and I can't sleep. I can hear the birds of dawn singing outside my window, their endless twittering now drowning in Beethoven's 7th symphony going crescendo.

I watched The Butterfly Effect earlier on TV. I remember going to the cinema to watch it a few years back when it first came out, and it was nice to watch it again and refresh my memory... Memory... what a funny creature, memory.

After I watched that movie, I went to bed but started crying again. Turning and tossing endlessly, I remembered my own teenage diaries written in little notebooks in the same way the hero of the movie is depicted doing/reading back. I got out of bed, switched on the light again and started rummaging in my drawers to try and find my own stack. When I finally got my hands on them, there was a fine layer of dust covering them.

I slipped back under the covers of my bed and started reading the first diary I started to keep (where there's actually more than a random line or two written by the child I once was) when I was around 12 years-old. I wasn't very good then. I kept mentioning the most trivial things, but there were some glimmers of deeper thoughts hidden here and there. The first entry starts with disappointment at the thought that moments just go to fast, and that most of us don't seem to appreciate them as we live them. Then I move on abruptly to mention that a friend has failed to call me to go ice skating. Each entry ends with the exact time, including seconds. I used to think if I made sure to record the exact time every time, it would help somehow to immortalise the moments recorded in writing.

As I flicked through the pages I start to notice that some pages have been ripped and I know I was the one who ripped them out, but I'll never remember why. All my years throughout high school are recorded vaguely in that diary, with lists of people I ended up in class with as I moved up a year. There are scribblings next to certain names, others are simply crossed out depending on who was my friend or not. Nothing out of the ordinary, really. In fact, the more I read, the more I felt surprised at how mainstream I could sound at times... oh, and so dramatic. Every little thing felt like the end of the world.

Then at some point I got up to get a glass of water and as I put down the diary, pieces of paper that were tucked between pages fell on my lap. I remembered them at once. Most of them were little notes I used to exchange with a girl in one of my most boring classes. We were 14. In one of them she wrote:

"My dear Aliska, I'm sorry I was mean to you earlier but you need to at least understand me if you can't find it in you to forgive me. I'm going through the worst teenage crisis of the century. I say and think things that are completely insane. Why am I telling you? I have no idea. Perhaps because you are the craziest girl I know, but not in a mean way. .."

It felt strange to read this back knowing that this very girl who wrote me that note all these years ago is now settled down, married with kids on the way. I did stare at the mention that the reason she wrote me this was 'perhaps' because I was the craziest girl she knew. It's not the first time that people will feel the need to use that word as one of the reasons they like me. Either that word, or that I'm 'so' weird.

I also read about a time when I went to a friend's house for a sleepover, which is news to me today - I have no recollection of it whatsoever. I don't know if the lack of memory worked to make it funnier as I read that passage. I was writing how me and that girl (we were both 13 then) didn't feel like sleeping, but another friend also staying over was already fast asleep. We decided to play monopoly, but couldn't keep the light on, so I told her to put a sock over the light bulb of the bedside lamp. Yeah... Then I wrote how I suddenly noticed a faint burning smell, and then smoke coming out of the sock... We retrieved it in time, but as it cooled down and I lifted it, it just dissolved into black crumbs.

I'm writing all this because as I read these glimpses, I realised that those I didn't recall are now alien to me. And that led me to think about memories in general. No matter the medium we use (be it writing, pictures or movies) memories are like water slipping away between your fingers... and they can never be trusted. The more time passes, the less they can be relied on. And not even trying to record them can prevent it, or the fact that the mind will alter everything about them as time goes on.

That sock 'memory' may have happened, but I may as well have read it from someone else. The effect would have been the same: it is as though it never happened to me because I have no recollection of it today. Each mind will remember a certain thing, a certain angle, a certain detail, and these will always differ slightly from one person to another even though they may have all be present during a same event. Some people will remember a certain occurrence while others will never have paid the same attention.

There was a time when I thought, perhaps naively, that I could try and record as much as I could in writing to 'capture' myself in its completeness, you see. I now realise more fully that it can never happen. The mind selects what it wants to remember, and then tampers with it so much as time goes on that what you're left with to 'remember' is nothing more than a twisted shadow.

Feeling sleepy now... It's just gone past 4am. I want to continue thinking about this, but my eyes won't let me.

19/11/2011

I feel as though I'm in mourning... I never thought I wouldn't be prepared to know myself. It was what I wanted to understand all along, and now I also understand what it really means to say 'ignorance is bliss' - because it's easier to never know, never question, never try to find out... that way, one can blame everything else for the rest of their lives never realising the part they play. They remain none the wiser, in a way, so no harm done. Had I not have this obsessive-compulsive, repetitive need to make sense of what doesn't make sense between me and people, or the world, I would have easily carried on simply assuming it was just the fault of others.

I'm so aware now of my inability to connect... The only reason it's not always obvious is because I constantly use my intellectual and reasoning capacities to build bridges and connect. But it was always painfully visible in real time around people.

I talked some more with my mother last night, and asked her if there was a possibility that me living with her hadn't in fact conditioned me to adopt the same 'symptoms'. After all, I grew up living with someone who lived in their own bubble, shying away from people, cutting herself off... I always assumed she just hated people and was unlucky in life in terms of never meeting the 'right' people. She said that it was unlikely. And I agree, I myself grew up in my own bubble, cutting myself off, struggling to relate, often terribly afraid of others because I couldn't make sense of them and couldn't relate on a social level.

All the problems we've had with people along the way... I've lost count. Now it makes sense. There's nothing worse than interacting with others but never understanding social clues properly. Never being able to create bonds or relationships with others because you don't even know how that works. You can see others do it, and you keep asking yourself: how does one do that? And then you want to try, but you realise that you can't because... whatever you need to do that, it's missing. So you revert back to being terrified and confused, closing yourself back inside your inner world where you're able to relate and connect.

My intellectual capacities allowed me to learn somewhat to be able to interact with people - the more formal the situation, or 'cold', the easier for me to get by - but one thing I was never able to grasp is the concept of 'small talk'. This thing just really eludes me. I never understand its relevance, although I'm capable to derive a reason why it exists logically, but I don't have the tools or capacity to integrate its meaning, let alone make any use of it. Now I can look back at all the times I tried to do like everyone else because I understood that was an important part of what people did when socialising. And I understand why people just stare back at me in confusion, or just ignore me.

I find it extremely hard - next to impossible - to look people in the eyes. I've always avoided not only looking people in the eyes, but also looking at people in general. I assumed for a long while that it was just that I wasn't interested, and besides what's to look at. The eye contact thing has bothered me for a while. Sometimes I tried to force myself, but every time I get confused and cannot for the life of me read a person's body language at all - I don't just get scared, it terrifies me. I could read about it, but never actually process it. It will remain a theory for me that can never be put in practice.

When I was younger, I used to be so scared of men, in particular. They petrified me beyond words, and to this day I avoid looking at them in general like the plague. When I have to go to a social gathering for whatever reason, say work, I'll talk to guys using solely my intellect. God forbid they should start making body language signs, or even look at me too much - it's a deluge of alien information to my brain and I panic. I can't process it.

Recently, I did get to experience my first 'relationship', but I realise the only reason it was possible was because the other person displayed distant, detached traits. He, too, didn't seem very good in terms of social clues, and there were things like that about him that made me feel safe. But then, I just couldn't process the idea of relationship beyond the theory and I became obsessed with the need to make my relationship look like a normal one out there. But I can't process feelings, I just intellectualise them, and when I can't, that's when I lose control in panic.

I feel sorry for my cousin who's staying with us at the moment... living with two strange women who never connect with him. It's always so quiet at home too. Each of us staying in our own head, interacting from time to time, but then each returning to our own universe. And there's my cousin in the middle, getting bored out of his mind. The weirdest thing is that I have to make a conscious effort not to assume he's the weird one out.

I could never leave home... whenever I tried, it ended in utter failure. The last time I tried, it was to go to university where I shared a house with 3 other girls. At first, the excitement and novelty of it all made it easier for me to socialise with them in the house. That lasted for about a month, and then I started locking myself in my room. I'd get so angry if anyone bothered me... I misread all their social cues, taking their curious staring at me for signs they hated me, which made me isolate myself even further, to the point where these girls really started to hate me. As I isolated myself further, I got warped into a downward inner spiral, not having anyone to help me out of that black hole - not having anyone to relate to. I stopped eating, started self-harming, became a complete wreck. And then my mother came, sort of took my hand and brought me home. But if she hadn't been there, I would have drowned in this big world I can't process on a social level.

How could I live alone in the outside world and not be eaten alive when I can't even make sense of social interaction and all these unspoken rules I can't read? I would stop even being able to function, I would simply shut down. And I know why my mother says I can't live alone, or why she gets so afraid for my sake whenever I talk of leaving... but these are just a reflection of my imagination. I couldn't leave even if I tried - it's too petrifying, the thought of being alone in the middle of a vast world full of people who speak this alien social language.

It all makes sense now... It makes me wish I could just stick a banner around my neck reading: socially clueless, mental glitch, sorry. Just so people wouldn't misunderstand my impediment for something other than what it really is. It's not that I'm just shy, or weird, or arrogant, or even a combination of those. Just so they would stop being so harsh on me as though I was acting the way I do on purpose. I always tried so hard... but when the brain isn't wired fully as it should, there is little than can be done, only the best we can with what we do have.

It's funny. I can make sense of the most complex pieces of information, my job itself seems the perfect example. Yet I get overwhelmed in any social situation and I can't even process the simplest of cues.

Right now I feel a bit like I'm starring in my own version of Shutter Island, I have to say. It's unnerving, to say the least.

18/11/2011

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.

17/11/2011

I'm still listening to "The Japanese popstars", and that's just because that song happens to fit my mood perfectly.

I am so tired.

Tired... of everything. I want to hang onto the dog sledding dream only. Whenever I close my eyes and imagine myself or simply picture the scene in my mind, I feel relief and beauty.

I'm gonna do this, you know. I'm really gonna pay too much money just to go to Greenland and do this.

Why? Because I'm looking for something... and I don't know what it is, but I've decided to listen to the call within.

I have to book something that's all packaged for me - you know why? because I'm absolutely useless in concrete terms. Here's the perfect example of a person (me) born and bred exclusively in cities. My only experience with 'nature' dates back to when I was about 10.

As much as my mind develops, the need to get back to nature is unbearably strong. There is a link I need to make at least for myself here.

I need to reconnect.

I need to let go of everything I ever thought I knew... and join the dots.

Words... No longer enough... sounds, gestures, actions, images, music...

I just want to fall into the deep end and not care if I never resurface again.

16/11/2011

Work is like high school, but instead of working for grades, we work for a salary. Therefore the only value in so-called education beyond learning to read and write has to do with conditioning - conditioning to get used and adapt to 'work'.

Then, depending on the type of 'job' one gets, the equivalent of homework is either easier or harder.

FACT.

The whole basis of this current society (the one I was born into and therefore know from experience) is a JOKE, and anyone who defends it or works fine along with it is either a brainless idiot (there are many) or a piece of shit that thinks they can make the most of it because they already understand the fakeness of it all.

I rest my case.

15/11/2011

I woke up feeling horrible... I can't focus at all. I have so much work and so little time to do it, the stress is coming back and I hate it. My mind keeps drifting off, and I don't seem able to rein it in to focus on writing all the complex things I need to write... that's really bad.

I couldn't even get out of bed this morning... it was so hard. I just need some time off badly... but before I can have it, I need to find the strength for the last hurdle, or something close to that.

It gets so hard at times to find the strength to rein my own mind in to have it focus on concrete things like work-related intellectual demands. But if I don't do it, I'd be in real trouble...