the me within me

I have always wondered about what is wrong with myself. And I do not want to tire you with my constant whining about the constant difficulties I face in life.

For the past couple of years, I've been scouring the internet, especially wikipedia, to find some psychological condition with which I could identify myself with. Having read upon myriad conditions, and having forced myself to try and identify with Asperger Syndrome, Schizophrenia, Bipolar  Disorder,  and many others, I've always ended up identifying with a few symptoms, but the rest to me have been non-present and rather alien.

I guess all I've ever really wanted was to identify with something so I could feel reassured that there was something 'wrong' with myself (I like to call it 'different') and not feel it was just because I am an idiot or some kind of jerk or  just emotionally cold. I've known from very early on I didn't feel the same things as other people nor did I understand certain behaviours like how to behave in social situations and so on, so I think it was natural and inevitable for me to go on this 'quest' of 'self-discovery' and search for some explanation or wonder if there were people out there who felt the same way I did.

That is, until a few months ago, I accidentally (out of curiosity) stumbled upon the wikipedia entry to Schizoid Personality Disorder, whilst I was reading about something else. I have a tendency to digress when reading a wikipedia entry, or even writing, like right now!. So I remember starting to read the entry, and as I read, tears started to trickle down my face. It felt that for the first time in my life there was something that made some sense, and there were people out there just like me, which meant that there were people that understood what I went through.

I honestly identified with all the 'symptoms' and what struck me the most was how accurately it was able to pinpoint my behaviour, the way I've mentioned it in the previous posts: my inability to portray what's inside outside, feeling as if I'm wearing some sort of cloak when I'm around other people, craving loneliness and so on. Another striking thing about the diagnosis was, and I've thought about this for years on end, how it was able to describe my inability to be decisive, and my believing and wanting of contradictory things. It's explained amazingly well how feelings and traits are divided into 'overt' and 'covert'. Overt tend to be the feelings and thoughts you portray and covert are the ones that are within and which people don't get to see. And for extra points, it was mentioned how Schizoid Personality Disorder correlated with INTP and INTJ on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and having taken the test a couple of times over the past year, I scored as INTJ once and as INTP the other.

It's taken me so long to write this blog entry for the sole reason that I am always very sceptical about psychological disorders because  a lot of the times they tend to be very vague and I think a large chunk of the population identify with  a few symptoms for each disorder,  because some of the symptoms always fall into the wide range of emotions humans experience.

friendships and an armada of other ships

I think my tendency to blog and create 'virtual relationships' comes from the fact that I'm very uncomfortable with the kind of friendships I create (or for that matter anyone else creates) in real life. The uncomfortableness comes from my idea of what friendships should be: in that each person should give each other enough room to exercise their freedom whilst also not imposing any emotional or physical bounds on the friendship, so each person in the friendship is not responsible for the other nor should either one be expected to behave in a certain manner in any given situation. So I guess what I'm trying to get at is that there should be unlimited freedom in friendships and for that matter all relationships. But I guess having said all this, this is probably a counter-definition to what friendships and relationships are all about, and I have to tell you, I don't understand interpersonal relationships,.........and yes, I do have friends, only a couple, and we're really close, and yes again, the friendship handles the way I've described above. But I think from my friends perspective, they perceive the friendship as not very close and even though I consider them to be my best friends, I'm pretty certain it's not reciprocated.

The perks of being a schizoid.