My mom sent me an e-mail about this guy misdiagnosed with coma:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/23/man-trapped-coma-23-yearsIt got me thinking about myself and so I replied to her with this:
"Its odd that you send me this. Thats sorta been what my life has been like. While I have a body I can move to seem alive, my true self has been restricted for so long. My true self.... I found, as that man did, salvation in daydreaming. But even after telling you all, its hard to be my true self, out of embarrasment in a way, but its almost like my muscles have atrophied, not that they ever had the chance to develop that well anyway. I guess it will take time, plus its hard to allow my self that freedom knowing I will have to hide again when I go to work. School isn't that bad, other's minds are too focused on school to concern themselves much with their surroundings, and I don't really care that much anyway, I don't really have any friends to lose."
Ultimatly, it has driven me to the brink of insanity, perhaps I am only sane in that I know that my "insanities" are insane... As a psycologist once said, "A true crazy person does not think they are crazy."
For the longest time I have spent my life daydreaming. Daydreaming while I drive, while I eat, while I do homework, while I smoke (infact I smoked more for daydreaming itself), and when I was younger I would daydream almost all the time. The only reduction in daydreaming I ever had was when I first started taking ridalin for ADD because it made it harder to daydream, but that didn't last to long. (Plus I found myself not taking the meds to facilitate daydreaming)
Over time though I began to lose touch with reality to a degree. I began to get paranoid, delusional even. But these delusions and paranoias only surfaced when around people. So i avoided social things, forcing myself to be more social at times. Why around other people only? Because it was all stemed from the underlying fear that people would see my true self. So I stoped daydreaming in public, I thought people would notice or my femeninity would show through. And coupled with depression, lack of social interaction, and anxiety; with that daydreaming part of my mind having nothing else to do, it began to imagine possibilities...soooo many possibilities. That part of my mind, now freed, began to process all the millions of miniscule details occuring in my surroundings, and connecting occurances, or finding possible connections. I would see so many conincedences: A teacher saying a word that coincided with a thought. A movement of a person that coincided with something. I would lissen carefully to the words used in explaining things, reactions to those words in others, meanwhile lissening to the conversations in a hall, another room, whatever I could hear. I began to see
possible hidden meanings, interpriting what this would mean if this possible hidden meaning was true or that one. And yet I'd still be taking notes or whatever it might be. Sometimes this overwhelmed me, and sometimes when it did, or if i was tired enough or hungry enough, I would begin to think these possibilities might be real. I even developed a fear that people could hear my thoughts, because I would see so many correlations between behaviors and words used that coincided with my thoughts. And this made me fear Daydreaming even more, even though I did not believe these possibilities, I still came to do things just-in-case. I even remember thinking I might be retarded and be too stupid to know it; I think that had much to do with feeling inferior to my inappropriatley male peers.
My biggest fear was that people would know that I am what I am, and I feared this because I was not sure of myself. I thought it was wrong to think that way. Or I feared the pain of others negative opinions, I have always been self conscious, and care much of what others think. But driven to the brink of sanity, perhaps beyond, I found myself one day admiting that there is only one way to escape the nightmare that was my life. I admited to myself that I did not simply desire to be a woman. I realized that even if at one time I could say it was only a desire, by living in my head for so long as a woman I could say I became woman. But I never simply desired to be a woman, I sought to live as a woman in my head, because I am a woman, and I needed that life, unreal as it was, to be content. I finnaly came to the point where I could not be content with simply dreaming my life, I needed to be real, to feal reality. The daydreaming was like a drug that fixed a symptom, but it had its side effects...the side effect of insanity. And as hard as it can be sometimes to face the truth and fix the real problem, sometimes there is no other choice.
I am freer now, and on my way to true freedom. I cannot turn back.
I am a woman.
I havn't daydreamed sence my realization, for the most part. I find myself still getting lonely sometimes and begining to think of daydreams I could fall into to distract my mind, but I fight, and I face the pain, because I must climb this mountain to freedom. I find my self Beginning to imagine a companion beside me to comfort me, but I realize that I am only lonely, but this is only temporary because I am no longer caged. I may not be free all the time, and I may still have a ball tied to my leg. but nothing will stop me from climbing this mountain. Because I am a woman, and I am strong.
