I had this weird memory I keep coming back to. I am at the playground with no friends staring at a group of kids playing tag. I am eight. I am wondering why I can’t be like them: careless, free, and unburdened.
I could never socialize with them, and they never had any interest in me. In fact, I was avoided when I tried to play with anyone. Why? Probably, because I was different.
Anyone have a time in their youth (or older years) when they realized that something was “off” or that they just weren’t the same.
Even as a toddler I have memories of things what I suppose some could call grandiose delusions. Kinda superpowers and such like. But I suppose most kids have similar ideas.
Has been the last ten years in which time I have felt different.
I never partied in hs…I was a loner and I was different…but I never thought I was different. I thought it was that I didn’t smoke pot or drank that I was different…so in a way I thought I was different but thought it was my own fault. So I went overboard with the pot and alcohol. My mind felt blank before I started using substances. I feel it was my way of explaining delusionally that I was "self medicating " with drugs and alcohol. But it wasn’t til abilify that I really felt I was truly medicated…the pot helped make my mind work more and I wasn’t so blank but it also made me crazier. I don’t regret anything.
I did a little pot, @turningthepage, freshman year, hanging with all the guys, but after 2 or 3 months they told me to start paying up, and I never went back.
If I did it now, I’d be so paranoid and frightened, it wouldn’t even be worth it.
I’ve always considered myself different, but that was mainly because of my birth defect I was born with, known as Spina Bifida. When I got into my teens I started feeling more down and depressed, but again, I attributed that to the fact that my dad was gone pretty much most of my junior year since he was in the military at the time and it was during the Gulf War of the early 90s. Anyway, flash forward about 10 years. Everything seemed fine, until few years ago when I was in a really bad car crash that resulted in me being in the hospital for almost a month and now have a titanium rod and screws in my lower right leg. About a year or so ago I was on the phone with my mom and out of nowhere just started bawling. It was then that I realized something must be going on and eventually in February of this year I started seeking help…again.
I was born with club foot, braces when learning to walk. I refused.
Said I should wear special shoes all my life. Never did.
Frequent sprained ankles, the same foot.
Adult, a runner, plantar fascia, now plaster insoles.
My mother, scoliosis, I think from RH negative blood, she says, car accident at age 14.
Has steel rod in her spine. Hard, I was only 4. Didn’t see her for 6 weeks, then body cast for a year.
I don’t know who took care of us. Certainly not my father.
I guess I was “different” from an early age but it was not something I really thought about till I went to public school a few months before my 14th birthday. Then the bullying really signalled that I was different.
I was very much a loner/outsider even before public school and had only one friend during my 10 years at boarding school. On hindsight it couldn’t have been that strong a friendship as we lost contact when I went to public school.
I was rarely included in the games the other boys played. I have no recollection of birthday parties. Certainly none after the age of 8. My birthdays were very much a family only affair. No doubt because the only friend previously mentioned, lived some 50 miles away,when we were living in this country.
