The Workings Of A Beautifully Chaotic Mind

I think about how people's minds work quite often. I believe it to be a true statement when I say, that until we know different we assume every other human functions the same as we do. I was in grade school when I was introduced into the idea that it is not always the case, sadly that lesson didn't really take hold though. The lesson was about color. I'm sure it's a common lesson. It introduced the idea that although we all agree blue is blue, we can never know how someone else sees blue. Later in life I discovered the harder lesson that men and women think differently. I have always been disappointed that men seem to have a one track mind, and if they are focused on something such as a video game they think of little else during that time. It took me a million times of asking men what they are thinking about before I ultimately gave up that they might be capable of having interesting thoughts. Well of course what is interesting is subjective. I think women are more interested in people and feelings, where men contimplate the burrito they had a week ago. I accepted that difference, but then assumed that all women had constant thoughts racing through their minds. They gave all the indications that it was so. Many women had the same fluid emotional changes that I felt. Moving from one emotion to another almost at random. And even with all these discoveries I found myself assuming everyone struggled with thoughts constantly as I did. These assumptions were further cemented in my mind because I never considered that I might be wrong or that something maybe wrong with my thought process. When I was much older though and many habits firmly in place for good or bad that I started to really learn things about myself. There is nothing that makes a stronger impression though then seeing someone else do the things you do. I eventually was faced with this and saw myself in the things I saw in him. We where like magnets in the way we where drawn to each other. His childhood is also riddeled with trauma and he suffered neglect from his mother. We both left home at a very early age and made it by just being survivors. To this day I consider him my brother and he is the only person I have kept in my life as a constant. We have both recognized the similarities in each other and found probably the truest version of love we can manage.

Many of the quirks I have started very early in my childhood. Just days old if not cared for and shown love a baby can stop thriving. Over time the affects that a person may have long term start adding up. If the issues are not addressed or changed they will be the trauma the person will be faced with throughout thier life. As a child my mother really had no concern for my well being and on several occasions instigated horrors to befall me. Because of this I had to learn some lessons very early in order to protect myself. I look back and realize I'm blessed to be smart enough to play the part I needed to for the situation at hand. I was also cute enough to gain positive attention from well meaning adults. I was never taught or shown in my family real love or caring so I lacked many normal emotions that others had. What I did learn was that strength was coveted above all else. This meant I didn't whine or cry, and I expected to wait for anything I needed. All of these qualities made me a joy to have around. I remember many neighbors, teachers, or friends parents where happy to have me around. I was always polite and well mannered, I would clean, babysit or tutor others. I was the kid that others would want around thier kids in hopes some of my behavior would rub off. I became a master of reading people. I still do this without thinking to this day. In every interaction I'm reading your facial expressions and mannerisms to gauge when I'm making you happy. This was never felt so strongly as the time I spent with a therapist who had figured me out and from that point on made a point of giving me little to no reaction. I wish I could put it into words how uncomfortable it made me in that situation. On the other hand I thrive when I am making someone or better yet a group laugh or be happy. And If your always trying to entertain and make others happy, you will become the person at the top of the list at the next get together. And I find that I feel that the happier others are and the more people tell me they like me, the more I feel like I won. When I win, I am happy. This has made me very competitive. The level to which I am competitive can be surprising, often competing with everyone including my own spouse. I will tell you though it is exhausting. I believe that this skill has gotten me through life though and why I didn't become a statistic of lost children that our society seems to have. There are limitations to this skill though, my handicap is my racing mind. I constantly have a flood of thoughts swirling through my mind at any given time. It might not sound too bad, but these thoughts are in combat with each other and me as a person every waking moment. These thoughts are my enemy because they are raw often harsh. They are the thoughts that might come to others but just as quickly leave thier minds. I think many others would find most of my thoughts not suitable for general audiences, needing to be censored to a level that is acceptable. For me it becomes a struggle to hold them back, to not let them slip from between my lips. The hardest of these thoughts to control are the ones tied to a strong emotion for me. For example you might find yourself in a conversation with someone who expresses an interaction with thier child. This might be something that you don't agree with. Well a normal person may store this for later contemplation, or just let it go that it isn't thier business or concern and never think on it again. For me something about children that might be questionable for others becomes attrocities against humanity for me. That thought will become lodged in my brain fighting to get out. I'll hold it back and I'm good at it in most cases during a normal amount of time. What I mean by that is for example the span of an evening out. I can in most cases hold that thought and all others swirling in my mind and make it through the night. Where I get into trouble is adding alcohol in excess or becoming overly tired. Well at that point I become less capable of keeping those thoughts to myself. This is where I assumed everyone was like me and everyone was struggling with thier own brain. I just thought I wasn't as good as others in keeping them from escaping. When those thoughts do escape I still rely on survival skills and will try to craft these thoughts into well worded sarcastic humor. I am usually good enough with quick wit and ability to read the room that I can destroy someone but manage to entertain the whole room doing it. I will always be the first to say whatever everyone else is thinking but have enough sense to not say. The people I have managed to have a relationship that spans years tend to love to be entertained and love hearing whatever crazy thing I'm going to say next. They also tend to not be easily embarassed. Another aspect I have on my side is being a woman many people want to see me as strong rather then rude. So people will tend to excuse my behavior or trick themselves into making excuses for me. I will say though this type of interaction with people has a shelf life. There are only so many times you can say truths to someone before enough have added up to be too many. I find that although I say my truth, the truth hurts. And hurtful truths add up to a pile of bad things that can't be gotten past. This means that with relationships I start out strong. I'm a joy to be around. I am a people pleaser and very outgoing. I learned at a very young age that the shy child goes without. It is not unusual for me to go to dinner and leave the restuarant having talked to several patrons and the wait staff and being invited to someone's house that weekend. It can be a roller coaster ride at first, all fun and games. People tend to love me or hate me pretty intensly. And luckily for me the ones that hate me are always out numbered which usually leaves them with the choice of going against the group or just going with the flow and putting up with me. But if I live with you, I am going to get tired or sick or in some way lose my battle with the thoughts at some point. I'm gonna slip and let out a truth eventually. Once that first one slips out the next one will break free easier the next time. My next handicap comes into play at about this time. I have had to make decisions for myself for a very long time and I can have an opinion about anything. This has been developed out of neccassity. There isn't anything worse then someone who can't decide. Children are rarely asked twice for thier opinion. I learned to make a decision early and stick to it. I will make that decision and work at it without hesitation until it is the right decision despite how wrong it started out as. So in a relationship when asked any question I will generally answer quickly and decisively. These answers may be very callus or hurtful to my partner but it is what I will say. If asked by my husband if I think a degree in liberal arts is a good idea, I will probably respond with my first thought. My first thought would be that it is a stupid idea that startled me in the absurdity he would even contimplate it. You can see how that might sting a little. So where at a party others might laugh and tease me that I keep it real, in a relationship I'm now just an asshole. The result of this is most of my partners would shut down and avoid those type of questions all together. that may seem like a workable situation, many marriages are made up of people who can function without much conversation and in some cases even without interactions. This is where my next fault comes into place. I'm not sure how this has developed or if it is just a personality flaw, but I I am a sucker of souls. It is about as bad as it sounds. I truly believe that there is a disconnect in my ability to feel things or have true feelings for others. I tend to choose partners because it makes sense on paper rather then a feeling or what I think feelings are. I think because I don't really have feelings of my own I want other people's. I want to know everything they experience, how that feels, and why they felt it. I believe I am a good person because I do things I feel a good person would do. It probably stems from a strong feeling as a child to not get into trouble. I have a deep need to not be in trouble or to do things I think are wrong. The way that looks in my life is to not do something I think is selfish. I don't believe in a higher power so it doesn't come from fearing being judged. And I think at heart I feel very selfish. But I won't allow myself to act on the selfish route only because I want to perceive myself as being right. I have some really strong reactions to others when they do things that I don't think are right. And in order for me to feel they where wrong I must always be right. You can see how this carefully crafted tower can only get so high before the weak base becomes compromised and starts to lean over. I tend to leave a relationship well before the other person has gotten to the point of wanting to leave me. The time that a person starts shutting down and my loss of interest in them usually occurs at about the same time. I have found that I don't rely on others for much of anything. I have always worked hard to succeed in my career which left me financially secure. I don't think I have loved many people enough to feel like I couldn't leave and just start over without much hurt on my part. My love or my version of it has always seemed to coincide with the amount of stories someone can tell me. The more open and descriptive they can be with details usually leads to my overall perception of how valuable they are in my life. I live on the raw emotional stories told to me by someone I'm in a relationship with. There really isn't anything I enjoy more. Money and sex don't really matter to me but I realize that others see these things as status symbols. And because I want to be liked and seen as wonderful I became good at making money and good at finding out what my partners need sexually. The more they like me the more apt they are to tell me anything and everything I want. These stories sustain me. I want to know the intimate details from someone's past. The details of the first sexual experience to the reason why you left your last job. I want to know what motivated them in decisions they made. The things that drove them and led to the choices they made. This would all probably be bearable for my victim if I could keep my thoughts to myself. I'm sure you can see where this is going though. I can't help but tell my brand of truth about it all. Worse of all, I judge. I judge about every detail. I think it might stem from my need to compare how I would have handled the same situation to how they did. And if I feel like I would make the better decision then it makes me feel like a better person. If I'm the better person then in my mind I'm stronger smarter and good. This is often a very unfair comparison. I can't fathom the emotional aspect that might have been involved in thier decision. In many cases people's motivation is to save someone else from hurting. For example someone might tell a lie in order to save someone else's feelings. Right or wrong I only see that a lie was told.

We I have little understanding of not being able to leave a situation as soon as the thought occurs to me. I can't tell you how many times I have been in the middle of a conversation and realized I was no longer interested and just walked away from it mid sentence. I have literally been in the middle of a date and stood up gathered my things and walked out. I did these things with no concern of someone else's feelings because they no longer held a reason I found compelling enough to care. I'm sure at this point you have decided that I'm a monster, and soul sucker has come to hold meaning in your mind. Now I have not been this candid with many people and I'm very good at winning people over. I 7dualky know what to say in order to smooth things over and really I don't think many people are comfortable with the thought that a person can truly be this disconnected from thier feelings. This has now brought me to the original point I was making and that is it took me a very long time to realize how different my thinking was. I was a prisoner of my own feelings never doubting them, and fighting my own thoughts thinking I was the only person on earth who lost that battle from time to time. It wasn't until I no longer needed to work twelve hours a day and was constantly busy that I had time to realize how u functional I was. When it did hit though it was like being hit with a ton of bricks. And here is where we close this up. After a lot of hours with a therapist I came to terms my coping skills where not only ineffective, they where damaging not only to others but myself also. That my uncontrollable thoughts and need to say whatever was on my mind was actually a form of OCD. Now with the help of meds and a better understanding of how my childhood affected me I am able to live with the thoughts rather then my thoughts controlling me. I am far from where I wish I was, but a lot closer then I have been most of my life.