Why am I Like This?

I have held off on writing this blog post for a little while now, since the conception, because I don’t want people to think I am playing the victim card or asking for pity, and I especially don’t want people to think it’s a cry for help because it isn’t.
I do, however, want to address the fact that I am weird. More specifically, I want to address the fact that I do not know why I am weird.

You can ask anyone who knows me, or who has known me in the past, and they will tell you that I am ‘weird’, ‘strange’, ‘different’, etc. It isn’t necessarily even a bad thing, it just is, and I am twenty-one now, I have well and truly accepted that I am the way I am, so be it. I’ve been weird since I was a kid, seriously, just ask my childhood best friend (she’s hard to miss, she spent all of high school sneering at me).

My first blog post was ‘Who Am I?’ and ultimately, the point of this blog- apart from being a hobby- is so that I can find out who I am. I can record my thoughts, feelings, past, present and future here, and if me finding out who I am helps others, then that’s great. But ‘who am I?’ isn’t the only question I have asked myself, as I am sure others ask the same of themselves. For a long time, I asked ‘why me?’. Why was I the one ostracised at school? Why was I the one with the unwell mother? Why was I the one with the backwards support network? Why was I the one who lost her mum, who loses all her friends, who likes books more than people? Why am I the one who has to live my life? I didn’t ask for it. I even told my father that he shouldn’t have had kids with our mum, and in some regards, as much as he loves us, he agreed.
I stopped asking ‘why me?’ a little while ago. It did no use asking that question, it just made me angry and sad, and it tunnelled my vision until I didn’t see the good things in my life anymore, and there are plenty of good things to see.

Recently though, I have asked ‘why am I like this?’
It is really easy going back through my fairly short life and finding things, moments, events and people that influenced certain parts of my (*gestures at my entire being*) personality and, well, existence.
For example, my self-preservation instinct to lie comes from my mother’s insistence that no one can ever know what was happening in our house. Even six years after her death I have to think hard about everything I say before I say it, just to make sure that what I am saying is the truth.
It’s also pretty safe to say that my inability to make friends stems almost entirely from my experience that was primary school. It’s really hard to trust that people are going to like you when eight of your formative years of friendship building and social skill developing was ruthlessly wrecked by the kids in your class.
It also doesn’t help that my desperation to be liked, or wanted, or needed, by peers comes from the warped relationship I had with my mother and watching her own desperation to be loved.

I am talking about beyond that though, I already know my upbringing and childhood fucked up those critical parts of me, it was kind of obviously going to happen, but there are other ‘quirks’ that I do not understand.

Such as, I am so far removed from my feelings half the time that I have to sit alone with music blasting directly into my head so that I can try and understand what I feel. Playlists for every mood or emotion or event so that when they are drifting beneath the surface I can find the playlist that brings them back to me. Playlists just labelled ‘For Sad Nights’ for when I know I feel bad, but that’s all there really is and I need to feel more than just ‘bad’. It’s like, I spent so many years feeling everything so intensely and then something switched off inside me and all of my feelings skirted away and I need to fight to feel them again.
What’s with that? Why am I like that?

There’s also the fact that I can get so obliviously caught up in a topic, a book, movie, artist, activity, subject, anything, and it is the only thing in the world that I will care about for an indeterminate amount of time. I have spent days awake, napping intermittently, to read an entire series and there is nothing I can do to stop myself. Even when I know, logically, that I really, really, really need to be doing something else (like studying? eating? maybe a good night’s sleep?), I can’t drag myself away. It consumes every part of my waking life until I have burned through it. Honestly, it’s 2am right now and I got it into my head to write this two hours ago and I couldn’t lie still long enough to try and sleep. I had to write.
A little over a week ago I read a trilogy and I barely slept for three days because I had to finish the series. Even now, I have reread the books about two more times and listened to the audio books about three times each? It’s like, this obsession takes hold of me and it’s all that matters. Only in the past day or two have I been able to listen to music or read a different book without feeling restless that it wasn’t the trilogy.
Fucking why? Like, why am I like this? What went wrong with my wiring?

What about the fact that I never have any idea what anyone is thinking, ever? I have been hard wired to assume that everyone is bored of me always, because all of primary school and even at home during those years, everything I had to say or anything I was interested in was shut down immediately. “No one cares Raegan” “Have you ever read anything that wasn’t about horses?” “I don’t care what the word means, did you eat a dictionary for breakfast?” “I don’t want to know”… So now, it’s just safe to assume that whatever I have to say is completely ignored or forgotten by my audience, or that they genuinely do not care and I have bored them senseless. Whatever, I’m used to it. What my problem is, I can never tell the difference. People can reassure me until the cows come home that they give a shit about what I have to say, but I can’t tell if they mean it. I can’t pick up on boredom or interest, I don’t know the difference between polite listening or full on attention. Apparently, people can normally tell? Why can’t I?

I am so tired of feeling scared and anxious when meeting new people, worried I will make a bad impression or put the wrong foot forward. I never know if someone is going to like me, or after I have met them, I never know if they did like me. Often, I ask, after a little while of talking to someone. “Are we friends?” “Do you, like, actually like me?” “Why don’t you think I’m weird?” “Um, are you sure you want to see me again?”
Some people call it ‘dumb bitch energy’, but I just call it complete transparency. Why don’t people ever say what they are really thinking or feeling? I know why I don’t, or can’t rather, because I don’t actually know what I am feeling half the time, but what about normal people? Why can’t they just be up front? Why do I have to try and read into subtext that is just a blurry mess of question marks? And more than the ‘why do I have to’, I want to know why I can’t.
Maybe I am just insecure because of the two-faced attitudes that have followed me since I was ten, or maybe I am just hard wired to be suspicious and confused by affection or attention. Why though? Why am I like this?

I have taken earphones to clubs just so that I can mute some of the loud noises before they rattle me apart, or sat outside and chain smoked just to keep my mouth and fingers busy and be out of the noise.
Touching blankets at K-Mart can leave me feeling itchy and uncomfortable if they don’t feel like how I expected them to feel when I saw them.
I can’t sit in a cinema without fidgeting for most of the movie, and my housemate learnt fairly quickly that asking me to put my phone away while we’re on the couch means that I will narrate the movie the entire time- and it took me over half the movie to realise she was annoyed at me for it.
Why?

Why does any form of affection feel like a lie to me?

Why do I have a voice in the back of my head that says I will never amount to anything?

Why am I like this?

Was I destined to be on the fringes of everything? Born to be the person in the corner of a room feeling out of place? The wall flower that doesn’t even want to be on the wall, but would much rather be alone in different room. Have I always been this introverted and wary of people, or was I an interesting and excitable child? Why do I want so badly to fit in and be part of the crowd, but shy away whenever the opportunity presents itself?
Why do I live behind a wall? Disconnected from everyone else, from my own feelings, from my own life. Am I just supposed to accept that it’s always going to feel like whatever happens to me is happening a million miles away? That life is going to pass me by like wind rushing through a tunnel, brushing past me and maybe rustling my clothes or whipping my hair around, but otherwise not really impacting me at all?
Did I do this to myself? Did I flip the switch to push my feelings away, or did they do that themselves? Was I born this way, or am I just damaged goods?
I don’t know, and I have exhausted myself asking the questions, but I needed to ask them. Maybe one day I will get the answers, or maybe I won’t. Either way, it’s at least for the best that I know myself well enough that I know which questions to ask. First step to recovery is admitting there’s a problem right? Well, I have well and truly admitted there’s a problem, I guess it’s time to recover (and yes, I have a counsellor so nobody panic- I’m trying).

At the very least, I can see a street light through the rain and pretend it’s the moon. Satellites are make shift shooting stars. 11:11 will always be the perfect minute to make a wish. I never waste birthday candles or 11:59pm on the 31st of December.
I may be a mixed bag of (non-clinical) neurosis, but I can always find something small to pin a piece of hope to.

(Click here to be redirected to the Youth Focus Instagram post I took the header picture from- it’s a picture of me, I figured I was allowed to use it…)