This person (who, incidentally, is a dear) thinks my life is (was, really...nowadays it's quite peacefully dull) interesting. I suppose it was. Unfortunately, interesting and, say "my personal safety" do not always go hand in hand.

For evidence of this, you should go read this one, and this entry. I'm honestly fairly lucky to continue to be alive, the shit I pulled.

Brief station break: Okay. There are folks out there reading me that I *really* wish would step up and say hello. I'm sure you're all amazingly engaging persons and how would I ever find that out if you don't at least wave in my direction? And where has my boyfriend (I'm joking, TG, don't worry) turtleguy gone? No updates, no guestbook-signings. I have managed to keep track of my bevy of beautiful girlfriends, at least. But I am not linking to them again because I do it all the time and they know who they are (especially that Moroccan-dating hussy who I *know* is just trying to make me jealous by dating some BOY at least MG is *faithful*. Hrpmh.) End of station break.

Anyway. My interesting life. This may be a good moment for a little overview of onehanded.

It is of course not easy to describe oneself succinctly, or, for that matter, at all really. But I'm going to try. In the terms that I best know how to go about it. So bear with me if I'm repeating stuff I said earlier, or if I get dull.

My childhood is largely a blur with a snapshot every couple of years or so. If I go back to the city in which I spent those years, a lot of things come flooding back, but largely my memory seems content to leave it be with just a couple of moments here and there. It would have been an ideal, happy childhood except for me. My parents of course have their own special brands of lunacy, but so do all parents, and theirs were, by and large, mostly harmless. But then there was me.

I was an odd one from the moment I sallied forth from the womb. In fact, before that, when I caused my mother 36 hours of intense pain, partly by being all backwards, neither trends which would stop there. I managed to be rather smart for an infant, whatever that means. It was later that I got more definitively weird. Most of my time I spent reading, by myself. I did not make friends easily, or, for that matter, at all really. I did not like school and am convinced to this day that I learned absolutely nothing from it. My fascinations tended towards the morbid, even as a very young child (think dead things and bugs), although I did not see them as morbid at the time. I spent lots of time starting fires and burning stuff with my arsenal courtesy of dad. I was lonely and precocious, and one of the many things that still makes me wince is recollecting being so proud of absurd things and running to my mother to boast, only to have her pull the "oh, how cute" face, which made me just burn with shame.

I spent most of my time in my head. Which was pretty delusional, actually. Wait. I'm getting way ahead of myself.

Realizing that this all doesn't sound so strange. Here's the part that adds that little extra dimension of weirdness onto it.

Basically, I was born with no filters, as my good therapist put it. I have gotten into this a little bit before, although I have not touched the part that makes me sound super-flaky. There were the usual senses, and all were hyperactive. In fact, anything that you could put the word "hyper" in front of probably describes me, except for the actual word "hyperactive", which I am most certainly not. Hypermobile. Hypersensitive. All that kind of thing. But beyond that. I was emotionally and (groan. I hate this word.) psychically hyperactive. Which made things way worse than my plain old five senses could.

Emotionally, I was (and am) a finely tuned device. I could always, always pick up on how people were feeling. This led to me having legions of people who could "only talk to me" later in life, and before I learned to tell them to fuck off, but that was much later. At the time, as a small child, it was just hard. Because while I could sense and understand the emotions, I could not process them. At least not appropriately. This was the biggest source of my massive guilt complex: since I could not process the emotions, I felt responsible for them. This led to many thousands of very misguided attempts on my part to "fix" people throughout my life. Since I could *see* the problems, I felt responsible for them. Including my parents. Especially my parents. I got killed, so to speak, every day. Every time one of them was sad or pained or whatever.

And the second part. This is the part that I'm a little afraid to tell. I'm wincing already in anticipation of your condemnation of my flakehood. I will try to be as non-flaky as possible here.

To say I was "psychic" is not appropriate. From birth until about four years later. I was not "reading minds". I just...knew people. Completely. Instantly. Every time someone walked into a room, or passed me on the street, it was like getting hit with a whole entire human person. Given that most of you are whole entire human persons, you might be able to understand the effect of this on a small child.

What happened at four, you might ask? I turned if off. I don't know how. It happened when I realized that I frightened my own mother. I said something to her that belied the fact that I Knew her, and she looked at me in fear. Of her own child. Is there anything more terrifying or sad that could happen? I did not like that. I did not like feeling that my mother, the provider of life and food and all other things, was scared of me. So I quit. My mother, in fact, has confirmed all of this, so I know I'm not just crazy.

Damn, that's hard to admit. Very few people in my real life have heard about this stuff. Not even my Boy. Especially not my Boy, in fact.

It's a funny thing about turning things off. Turns out it's awful hard to find the on switch again.

I did the same thing with emotions, though I don't remember exactly when. I spent many, many years feeling "numb", as I put it. Which is a big reason why I wound up on so many couches, trying very hard to recover some of the apparati to make me go again. The only thing I managed to squeeze out emotionally speaking for a long time was despair. And guilt. That was basically it. I moved into my cranium while I was very small. I lived there. It was much easier to handle the basic workings of my brain than those of my heart and others', or of the other parts.

As for the rest of it...it's never come back completely. More than it was, sure. But not like I was then, which is probably for the best.

While I'm disclosing I may as well go whole-hog and start getting this stuff out of my system.

On the I'm-not-crazy front. I was terribly skeptical myself, and I thought for years that I was just kidding myself, and that none of the stuff I Knew was real, I just made it up in my head. A couple of things (initially) changed my mind.

First, when I was 17, just after moving back home from Boston after living there the second time. We had a huge flea market near our house. I had been reading tarot cards and exploring similar things for a while. Though I never memorized the meanings of the cards, actually. Probably for the best. Anyway, I would go to the flea market and read tarot cards, figuring that it was a quick way to make a few bucks (which it was). One of my first readings sat down. I looked at her and started shuffling the cards. Hadn't laid down even one when I opened my eyes and said to her (in these exact words) "You have a lot of people inside of you. And something about a house." Turns out she was a multiple-personality with a house that had been on the market for years and causing her great strain. Of course I was terrifically embarrassed at just having told a multiple personality that she had "a lot of people inside her" but still. Another one of my "readings" resulted in a woman that wouldn't make a decision without talking to me. I eventually had to actually tell her to go away. I was 17, fer chrissakes. I didn't want the responsibility of making a 45-year-old woman's choices for her.

And second there was the guy I worked with at the gas station some. Once he was in the cooler and I was out by the counter and he came out and I looked at him and described his childhood apartment in exacting detail, and then said something about hating to have his arms behind his back because of being punished like that, and that when arrested (it had happened a couple of times) he made them cuff him in front because otherwise he would go nuts. His jaw dropped.

So there, I'm not crazy. And if you think I am please keep it to yourself as I am uncomfortable with this enough as it is.

I guess my life overview went in a tangential direction. Probably for the best.

onehanded