HI. Do you think I belong here? [I think I do]
Here is my story. [ a little long ;p ]
When I was an infant, I was rather shy, timid and quiet guy [still am]. My parents noticed nothing abnormal about me, excluding that I gave them trouble when I was a baby due to vomiting that seemed to last more then normal. [According to them always].
However, they soon noticed that although I started to talk at the same time people do, my voice was very high pitched and that I couldn’t pronounce certain letters and used to pronounce another letter instead. I remember when they took me to speech therapy [age 7-8 I think ] on a regular bases and I made a very good progress. However, even till nowadays, when I meet a word involving a lot of these letters sometimes [well rarely] I get stuck in it.
I was very good in math when I was young, and I disliked languages. I was also quiet creative. I remember when I was young when my teacher gave me a ‘a merit star ‘on my copybook because I expanded the multiplications up to tables of 35. [ you know when we where infants they used to give us books that showed tables generally up to 12. for some reason I decided to expand them up to 35 ]. I never studied for any exams and rarely did homeworks, which classified me as a lazy and untidy child. However, I always passed exams. I also had a poor handwriting. [Still have]
I was also terrible at soccer [still am]. I would consider myself lucky if I managed to hit the ball. Combined with being thin and not that strenghty, I started to hate soccer and wasn’t interested in it. I ended up playing with girls instead of boys, marking me as a weird boy. Then someone old came and told me ‘ its not normal for a boy to play with girls and I should play with boys. I kind of got shocked at first because I didn’t know it wasn’t a normal thing to do. I then stopped playing with girls and started playing soccer with boys, even if it meant getting me humiliated. I wanted to be normal.
Also another thing I remember was the way I played games when I was young. Not the first time I played a game that should be played such as card games or snake and ladders alone, imagining they where actually 4 players. I played different from most children, and I think I delayed my playing. I know it sound funny, but at age of 16 I still played with paper planes in a tournament form with points system [alone]. I know its weird but I liked it. I don’t do it anymore tough ;p.
All what I said above, happened before I was 11 years old. Then the exams for secondary came. Even if I didn’t study a thingy, I managed to get 200 marks out of 200 in my math exam, and average in the rest 4 subjects. My average marks where high enough to put me in one of the best schools for the next 5 years, from 11 to 16 years old. Our educational systems, splits boys and girls into separate schools from ages to 11 to 16.
When I started secondary school I felt friendless and lonely. I was also feeling inferior from other children even in math, which followed by a reduction in marks in all subjects. My behavior was very different from them and I couldn’t help it. I found it difficult to communicate, mostly because people where interested in things that I didn’t enjoyed or knew anything about, so I couldn’t talk on things I didn’t knew. I started to get a tendency to daydream instead of trying to communicate with people. Ironically, my strange behavior made some people to like me even tough I knew that they found me weird.
At the age of 12, I managed to find that if you multiply the side of a square with root 2 you get its diameter. Well I know it looks stupid, but when I found it gave me a sense of pleasure [don’t ask me why- don’t really remember well how my mind worked at that age]. I slowly, slowly got obsessed in stuff like this, and went on trying to discover stuff before I learn them. In the second year of the secondary school I got so focused on this that I preferred to do 4 hours of this stuff rather then any homework, which eventually got me in trouble with teachers, labeling me lazy. A guidance teacher came in to try and find why I didn’t do my HW. Which I didn’t tell. Well I can’t imagine young me telling her, ‘ hey I don’t do homework because I spend a lot of hours a day doing this weird fantasy math that for you is non sense ‘. [ I have to say that I did do weird math stuff that wasn’t real, but I was still young I bet and was still learning].
Following this, even tough I didn’t did my homework, my long term memory was excellent, enough to pass exams. My math mark resparked upwards in the 3rd year [most probably because the math I did at home indirectly helped me] and was considered the best math student in my class. The funny thing is, I never did my math homework and never taken notes. I just absorbed everything useful the teacher said rather quickly, and combined with my math work at home, I did well. Eventually my math work at home started to get real, and it was at the age of 13 that I really got obsessed about inventing math before I learn it, with the hope, of finding something useful in the end. I discovered stuff like the equation of a circle, tangents and other similar stuff. I know that they where not of any useful, but they started to provide my early training skills.
Even I could easily say my interest at that time was not social communication and activities like most people of my age did, but where only about computer games, math and weather. I considered all other activities as boring and I lost interest in them. This doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy other activities. If I was in another activity I would have experienced pleasure, but when compared to my narrowed interests, they looked boring and I avoided them. However, in social communication I suffered and often didn’t talk at all unless there is the need to do so. This started some problems.
I was bullied heavily during my transport from school to home in the school bus. I didn’t know how to handle them, so I just smiled at them as they bullied me. I don’t know why I smiled at them, but it was the way I showed my emotions, which again was a weird way. Infact I learned that the smile/laugh is a happy emotion so I use it a lot, even when it is not normal, making me even more weird. I still smile nowadays when I break something, or get in a new situation that I have never been before, etc etc. I think I developed the smile as a defense for my limitations of other emotions and non verbal communications, which even tough are developed enough to make me look highly normal, I rely on my memory of when to use them. So in new situations, I usually get weird. I don’t like to do eye contact much, but to prevent myself from looking weird, I force eye contact from time to time, sometimes staring . I don’t know how to use power on other persons. I have never picked on a person in my whole life accept my brother. Instead I project my power on things like rough sea and powerful storms. [ I may sound confusing so don’t worry. What I mean is that seeing the sea getting rough and other stuff like that indirectly gives me the same pleasure that a normal guy will get when he picks someone ]. I am very honest, but I do like to play the innocent when I do something wrong. For some reason, I care a lot of my reputation and how other people view me, and I try to avoid at all cost making any possible enemies/bad reputation.
However things got really worse when I was 14. It was a normal attraction to females that made me realize that I have social problems. I behaved different from people of my age. I was not like them. I didn’t cared much about that when I was young, but things turned at age of 14. The fact that I had no friends and that I didn’t go out, I tried to find my own ways which I failed miserably. I didn’t know how to behave and showed eccentric emotions which marked me weird. To cut it in short, I never managed to form any meaning full relation with females till my current age { 19} [never managed to hug a girl ;/]. The only way to do so was to go out and be a social guy, which I wasn’t good at. My social communication is good enough not to be noticed that it is somewhat limited, however my social behavior is too eccentric and it disables me socially. I sometimes question why people who call themselves normal behave in those ways. If my ways are weird to most people, the same applies for me, since I see most normal people sometimes behaving in a weird way.
I tried to find the he/she that was similar to me, but I failed, which started an unwanted thing : (. Infact, at the age of 14 I failed down and triggered my first depressive episode. However I recovered since it only last 2 months or so and was not that severe, and with no symptoms at all, accept crying a lot and sadness.
The depression episodes got worse over the years and duration, and too complicate things, full blown anxiety episodes occurred at age of 17 which now I can simple call generalized anxiety disorder, even tough I am not diagnosed with it [ never bothered really]. The last depressive episode started at around first week of august 2008 and is still continuing till now, although I am used to it now.
I then started to look for the cause of my depression and anxiety, and blamed it to the fact that, ‘’ the way I behave and the way I think is different from most people around me’’. I can’t help it : (. And the fact I can’t find anyone who is similar to me makes me even sadder. I tried to check if I had a personality disorder, which I thought I was a schizoid, but I didn’t agreed much on it [also considering the fact my symptoms started from infancy not adulthood]. I never had hallucations or delusion [well I allowed believes as long as they have a small percentage of reality in them, which for some people seemed weird, ex: believing in inventing something new, etc etc].
Now returning to my last years in secondary school, I did well in math and I liked physics also. Tough I then got bored with the latter because of the practical and assignments. It was funny being the best guy in math without doing nothing and no HW, while others had to struggle and study and take notes just to pass. However this only lasted till age of 16, since I started to loose interest in mathematics as it expanded, focusing on small areas only, which started to lower my marks. It was then that I realized that I didn’t really liked math, I only liked to invent math, which is a big difference. However in the areas I had interest in, I was very good at. I surprised my teacher when at the age of 14[almost 15] I discovered a simpler form of the Newton interpolation formula [without knowing it exist], and as people found a simple liner equation for a given data in class, I found an exact polynomial of 6th degree. The sad thing is the most work I managed to find has already been found, but it still served as good training in the end. At the age of 17 I did a whole topic which I named ‘ arrow formulas ‘, which I later found they already exist as floor functions. I was a little sad at first, but happy since most of my work was correct when compared to the results. Only one result was not there, a simple formula to convert number of radix 10 to any other whole number radix digits, but nothing of importance. To be honest, I don’t really care if I invent something in the end, since both money and being popular fall out of my interests. I don’t want to be rich. It will not bother in the end, doesn’t really matter for me. I just feel that if I can contribute something good, I will do it. That’s why I failed at university. First of all the subjects at university are too much expanded that it’s impossible for me to have an interest in all of them. I can study them all by heart, but for what? University is for people who wants to have a carrier and make money, and not for people like me that the only thing they want is trying to invent something with new information. University was/still is hell. I sat at the very back, daydreaming, observing the way people behave, sometimes being attentive only to topics I liked, or doing my own math during lectures. I failed my exams, and didn’t even bother to do the annuals.
I then switched to philosophy the next year.[ not sure why, I just wanted to gather some more time, since I am like floating around don’t know what I should do with my life]. I thought it would be a boring year. However, surprising I found some parts of it very interesting, and I think I will give it a try one day, even tough I prefer math since with math you know more what your doing.
Now getting to me in present day, I have the following abnormalities.
1) I Daydream a lot. [Very a lot]. I am even scared of learning how to drive cause of it. I need to daydream and deplete my mental power before I sleep; otherwise it gets hard for me. I also have a pretty good imagination. When I hear some types of music my daydreaming strengthens, and also when I walk daydreaming is enhanced. Sometimes, when I am totally alone, my introverted daydreaming might come out, but I try to keep maximum alert not to let anything weird to come out of me ;p [ this is in extraverted way ]
2) I tend to bite my pens when I am working. I also tend to touch my hair when I am thinking deeply. When I think very deeply for a vert long time., I start getting itching in the front of my head, which spread out in all of my head eventually, making me look like a monkey itching its head ;/ [I don’t do it in front off people tough, excluding my family]. It’s usually a sign of me getting tired. I don’t do this in front of people since I keep myself on alerts, excluding the pens thingy. Like daydreaming, I tend to think better when I am walking.
3) I am very quiet, shy and timid, and don’t like to hurt people. Actually even when I do something bad to someone I didn’t intended to do so, I feel very sorry. I also care about my reputation and the more people that thing I am a good guy the happier I am. I have internal ethical rules that control my abnormal impulses.
4) I have been observing how normal boys behave so I recall to my long term memory to help me behave normally. However this is not the case with girls, since I don’t really know how normal girls behave much. I tend to get very anxious and too shy, and : ( in the end.
5) If the 14 year old me had to read this, he would say that I am a stupid guy for posting this. Guess depression changes people in the end.
6) Longing for people who are similar to me, since I fel different from most people around me.
A little long I know.
04 May 2009, 5:44 pm
welcome 
