I had to laugh silently at some of the questions which were obviously trying to gauge if I was crazy. Asking me if I've been hearing voices in my head, seeing images which aren't really there, having this strong feeling that someone out there is out to get me and ruin my life... Of course I answered "no" to all these questions (because I really don't hear voices), but deep inside I became a little afraid. Because I do have this tiny fear that I am not completely sane. If only they asked the right questions, I'm certain I wouldn't have made it to the final interview.
Earlier I was at Trinoma, and as I was walking I had this sudden feeling of disconnect with all the others around me. I'm sure I must have imagined it, but it seemed like all those people kinda blurred, and I felt like I was alone. It was as if I was inside this bubble where I can only see clearly the objects which are within my reach. It was crazy, and I was aware that it was, and with that realization I found myself not moving, catatonic-like, my head cocked, my lips parted, and my eyebrows furrowed as if I was straining to hear... something. It was a good thing that happened when I was on the escalator, where I didn't need to walk. It would've been unbearably scary for me if it happened while I was actually walking.
And of course, I shouldn't forget to mention how I've been silently talking to myself more and more often lately, even when I'm in a crowd of strangers. Or how my mind flies away at times, and I actually momentarily forget where I was and what I was doing. One time I was eating this burger and I got lost in my thoughts. The next thing I know, I was staring at my empty tray.
"We all have our quirks," a friend once told me, but in my case, it seems like my life is one big quirk. I mean, come to think of it, which aspects of my life can still be considered as normal? I know my friends won't believe me because they see me, and I'm not like that when I'm with them. I'm passably normal when they're around because I know that they are there. But when I'm alone, it is a completely different matter.
But don't misunderstand though. These episodes do not happen all the time. It's not like I go completely gaga the minute I'm left to myself. It is only thanks to my ever-present self-awareness that I notice that they are becoming more frequent lately. And even if I know that I am becoming increasingly freaky each day, I cannot do anything about it. I am hopelessly helpless against it. I suppose my greatest fear about my mental health is that one day, I will find myself unable to function normally at all. That is actually one of the driving forces why I blog so often. I want to preserve my thoughts and memories while I still have the capability to do so.
I think all these years of feeling different from everybody else are already taking their toll on me. When I was a kid, I didn't really care much if I had weird ways of amusing myself. I was content to be in my own world and all its rules. But now that I'm older, and I have developed a keener sense of acuity to compare how I function with others, I've reached the conclusion that I am indeed, rather oblique. I've spent years attempting to blend it with the others. I tried to learn how it is to be normal, doing what they do just to prove to myself that I can do those too. But the backlash of what I did was that I only emphasized to myself how different I am.
I began to be plagued by questions why the other people do not do the same things I do. Why they have a completely different perspective about life. Why they do not reach the same conclusions as I did. And I've spent fruitless hours blaming myself for being such a weirdo.
I tried to diagnose myself, and I began to look up psychological tests for diseases of the mind only to finally answer the question why I am so fuckingly different. I thought I was an aberration, and I held on to this negative view on myself until I finally stumbled upon this article about "gifted" individuals.
Oh I'm not really sure if I'm gifted, reader. I'm not going to claim that I'm 100% sure that I am. I don't think my intellectual capacity matches the high standards described in the criteria. I really don't think I'm smart enough to qualify. But all the others, well, I think they really describe me quite accurately. My emotional oversensitivity, my manic drive for truth, my passion for equality and justice, my emphasis on self-actualization and existentialism... All these characteristics which I never imagined a gifted person would possess were in there. And it doesn't help that actually denying you are gifted is one of the characteristics of being one.
I derived a brief surge of relief after reading that. Assuming that I was indeed gifted will explain a lot about how I've been behaving, most especially lately. It helped me understand why I'm failing at stuff even if I have the right perspective. It was a most welcome burst of light in my head. All this time, I was punching myself for being too weird, only to realize that there are such people like me out there in the world. It felt so good to realize that I am, in a way, normal like you.
But as I said, that happy feeling did not last long. Because giftedness is something you have to bear for the rest of your life. Because it entails that the majority of people will misunderstand you and it is you who will have to do the adjusting. That for the rest of your life, you will have to think not only for yourself but for the others too.
Oh reader, just in case you're thinking about it, let me tell you that I don't derive any satisfaction whenever I assume that I just might be "gifted." You can call it "demented" if it pleases you, and I wouldn't have minded.
It's a good thing that after many years I finally learned about this so I can stop trying too hard to fit in. From now on, I will accept that I am who I am, crazy or no.
It is nice to have a natural tendency to overthink and overfeel because it allows you to understand more about everything, but there are times when I would have gladly traded a quieter mind for all this shit, churning endlessly in my head.
At times, I feel like snapping and finally going insane will give me the relief I've been searching for all these years.
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