Amazing-Diagnostic-Development

You know that cliche about the gay guy who "doesn't know" he's gay, but everyone around him does, so much so that it's humorous? At least, it's humorous when the setting is a sitcom. I'd say it's pretty downright sad and tragic, wouldn't you? That a person would believe a lie that he's perpetuating in order to be accepted by others, except the lie is so flimsy and weak that no one who matters to him even remotely believes it?

Well, my only fear in making the confession I'm about to make is that it's possible I am like that guy. I suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder. There. I said it. Ok? All of you in the wings who have been waiting for me to stop denying this, go ahead and get your reactions out of your system.

Sigh. Yes, it is part of the "disorder", "syndrome", "difference"--whatever you want to call this thing that I have, that I am--that I blow things out of proportion, that I exaggerate to make a point. (I fully understand that there may not be many people at all who have been shaking their heads with rueful smiles, waiting patiently for this ADD guy to "come out of the closet".) In the last week or so I have learned so many things about why I am the way I am, but one of the most comforting things I have found out is that my tendency to exaggerate, to overdramatize, when I share things with other people, is not a character flaw, but a genuine and well-meaning attempt to show others how intensely I experience things.

I am 35 years old. I have been trying to keep from seeming, looking, acting, *being* "crazy" for pretty much as long as I can remember, but certainly at least since I was 10 or so. I have had these "pivot points", or "inflection points", in my life-- I keep them treasured, stories of myself, traditions handed down by myself to myself, and occasionally to others. I don't think there are many people, if there are any at all, who know the complete set of these stories.

These stories are of when I was transformed from one thing into another. When I came into the moment (the "moment" usually lasting a few weeks) I thought of myself as, I *was*, one thing, and I came out thinking of myself as something different in a fundamental way. Only after my first round of serious psychological counseling, at age 25 or so, was I comfortable enough with myself (and with my bipolar dad) to occasionally share with someone that these "moments" in my life had some interesting things in common with "manic episodes" (God I wish I could remember how old I was when I first heard that phrase).

It's actually quite simple. My brain is different from the brains of the majority of people in society. Very different. The differences are so profound, that they have led to all manner of mistakes, accidents, social missteps, beginning pretty early in childhood. As all people do when they have a serious weakness or disability that threatens their ability to thrive in society, I developed "defense mechanisms" and "coping strategies", which I had to spend extra energy maintaining. It was sort of like the system we have installed in our house, to remove radon gas.

You cannot tell, except by use of a specialized testing pack that reacts to slowly emitted radiation, that radon gas is being released in someone's basement. But it is harmful to the health of the residents nonetheless. So you get a system installed, that gets the gas out of the house. I have to confess that I've never even bothered to find out how it works. But the point is that this system took effort and expense to install, and it will drain some energy from our house's power system from now until the house is destroyed.

I have a "system" inside me--hidden from view, designed to be undetectable, and generally undetected, since part of the strategy, the point, of my system is to avoid detection by those who are experts in such systems. In my case, I have avoided ever sitting in a room alone with a psychiatrist, someone who might order me to take a drug, or who might stamp me with one of the crude stamps that the psychiatric profession has at its disposal.

I may explain this system more fully in other writings--I may not--but what I wanted to note here is that I now understand that I have only fully experienced life as a human being when my life was under sufficient stress to temporarily disable my defense system. When this happened, part of me would stare in awe at the new world, the world that I normally was asleep to, and the other part of me would moan in anguish at the inevitable parade of gaffes, serious career missteps, and theatrics that seemed fun at the moment but just seemed like lame vaudeville a few hours later, in the light of day.

The ashamed guy would then remove the punch bowl, shut off the stereo, kick out the guests, shoot the fun guy up with chemical lobotomizers, and set to work repairing the defense system and restoring its power supply. The fun guy, the Rip Van Winkle, would then sleep for another year, two years, whatever, and then the cycle would start again.

There may be a book in here somewhere. There may not be. But something is going to be different from now on. The fun guy may be around more frequently, and he may be able to get along better with the outside world.

Anyway, I don't know how much longer I'm going to be writing here in this blogspot blog; I've just signed up for a new web site, called trois-souris.net (Three Mice). As soon as I can get the blog software installed there, I'll be writing there.

Thanks for reading this.