How is it being you?
In thisthread, I shared a little vignette about how “neurotic” I am. But while I was composing it, I thought, “How do I know if this is unusual? What if everyone else goes through this?” I realized I have no idea what other people’s lives are like. I only know what it’s like being me.
There are a number of Dopers on the board with unusual circumstances. They may have bizarre medical problems or psychiatric issues. They may live in the ghetto, in trailer parks, in parental basements, or completely off the grid–all for a variety of reasons. Some Dopers might be as poor as you can get (while still having a internet connection) while others have money coming out of their ears. Some of us are members of stigmitized minority groups and/or members of invisible ones (like, are there any Australian aborigines here?) Or there might be Dopers here who have other things about their identity that are extraordinary or special, and I just can’t give any more examples of what I’m talking about.
If you find yourself feeling like there’s something about you that makes you different, weird, unusual, or just plain interesting, would you mind posting a little story from your life that exemplifies this? Specifically, I’m thinking about what challenges or quirks do you deal with? What keeps you going? Do you feel different or do you choose not to think of yourself in that way?
I’ll get things rolling. I love objects. My love for objects is much more apparent to me than my love for people (I do have a select group of people who I do love very much, though.). Specifically, I love things that I create. It started when I was 12, when my parents bought me my first box of Sculpey (think clay but made out of plastic polymers). I would take a ball of the stuff, shape it into a dice-sized cube, bake it in the oven, paint it a hue from out of my vast collection of acrylic and water colors, and then add it to my collection. By my high school years, I had over a hundred of these “friends”. In fact, I still have them; they’re sitting on my dresser bureau right now in a dusty glass container. More than 20 years later! And yes, they were truly my friends back in the day. I would line them up in various combinations, carry subsets of them around with me in my pocket, play with them during class, cry when I lost one of them, hide them when bullies were near, etc. I never named them, talked to them, or outwardly anthromophorized them, and yet in my mind, they still managed to be lovable entities with individual personalities. They were totally functionless, not even beautiful, but I loved them with all my heart. I don’t know exactly when my feelings for them started to fade. But I think it coincided around the time I got very intense with my drawings, which again, were nothing to write home about artistically. But I loved them despite their horribleness (not all of them were bad).
The habit continues to this day. I love the flower pots that I decorate (using Sculpey and acrylics!) I’ve got over 50 of them distributed across the city on various porches, stoops, and window sills. They mysteriously appear on people’s property and the innocent residents just take care of them (or rather, the plants I put inside), never knowing who how they got there. If I discover that one of my pots is gone from their original perch (you better believe I have a mental map of where all my pots are), I feel like I lost a friend. But then I also love trees. I get sad when they shed their leaves because it’s like friends leaving town for the summer. I will sit at my desk at work and think about them while I’m running programs. If Big Brother’s got spyware on my work computer, he will find countless google searches for state trees and then facts for those trees and others. For instance, did you know that the common pawpaw produces the largest fruit native to North America? I love the common pawpaw just for that. I once went to an arboretum in New Jersey JUST to find a common pawpaw. Alas, it did not have one, and I went home disapointed about it, too. But now I’m surrounded by so many of them that they’re too numerous to count.
I know when I’m unraveling a little when the “fixations” block out everything else. Like if they make me late for work, or if I find myself thinking more about them more than the people I love. I’m smart enough not to bore people (at least too much), because I know it’s weird and no one cares about my things except for me. But without them, I would be lost. I don’t know what I would do. I don’t even think people could save me, and that kind of concerns me. So I’m trying to strike a balance. I’m doing better about calling loved ones (the people, that is) and listening to what’s going on in other’s minds and in their lives. Because apparently I stopped listening when I was 12 years old, when my world suddenly became focused on making little colorful cubes.
Now you go.
