More on flexible sense of self (part 1)

I used to be terrible at writing. I got terrible marks on it in school, but I never understood what I was doing wrong. In high school I got by having my mother read my papers and edit them. Sometimes she would ask, "you're actually learning something from this, aren't you? I'm not just doing your work for you?" And I would say yes, but I wasn't. It wasn't trying to shirk, I just honestly didn't understand or value it enough to learn. In college I just got bad grades in paper classes, so I avoided them. I stayed terrible into law school, where I learned a highly technical version of writing that finally made some sense to me. I even became an editor, but I still struggled. Only recently have felt like I finally understand writing to the point where I can recognize how/when my writing is flawed. It's been really crazy to have the book published. It feels sort of like maybe having a stutter all of my life and then becoming an opera singer out of the blue. Now I sometimes edit my brother's papers that he is trying to get published. His writing is terrible in all of the same ways that mine still inclines and so I often have the chance to reflect on how much my writing has changed.

I've had other similar experiences. Becoming self-aware of who I am (manipulative, ruthless, unempathetic, etc.) was a watershed moment. I even used to be terrible at music, particularly jazz improvisation, until one day it just clicked and I can play solos over any sort of chord changes. Again, both of these changes were huge. It's as if one day I woke up being able to slam dunk a basketball or run a five minute mile. And I worked for all of it, but there was some sort of cognitive block keeping me from really internalizing the concepts until suddenly there wasn't.

In some ways I guess this is why I am so bullish on the possibility of living my life one way and then finally discovering a new way to live. It's one of the hidden benefits from having a weak sense of self --  there's not that much of an attachment to who I currently am. Maybe one day I will have changed so much that I no longer identify as a sociopath? Because even that identification did not really come from within, but from seeing the way people reacted to me -- their expectations of me and the way that I met, failed, or exceeded those expectations. I liked this quote from Annemarie Roeper about this from her book "The 'I' of the Beholder":

We don’t really understand our Selves or what life is. It is a mystery, and this fact is hard to accept. Humankind has developed many theories about you and believes they are facts, but in the end, all we can see is your behavior, your reactions to the world around you, and the world’s reaction to you.

So not only are we constantly changing (and have such an incredible ability to change), but our sense of self changes as the world changes, and consequently our reactions to the world and the world's reaction to us. I wonder what most sociopaths would look like if the world's reaction to us were more positive.

There is no there there

A reader asks:

Do sociopaths actually have personalities? I mean clearly defined, stable personality types. Is there much variance from person to person? I've personally been drawn toward the ISTP of Myers-Briggs. Under all the bullshitting and such this is close to what I am. Under all the lies are we clones? Or are our core personalities changed by our experiences? Or does empath profiling relate to us at all?

I like to model my outward self after people I admire. I do admire some people. I look at them and I think, I could be you. I sometimes recognize myself in the actions of empaths, but I usually find disappointment when I look closer. The reasons why they do so many things make no sense to me. It is like looking at an alien species sometimes. They are afraid of everything. But I have also been disappointed when I come across low-functioning or low-IQ sociopaths. They may not have the same drives as empaths, but the results are the same. They do idiotic things with no thought of purpose. So is that the only difference between us, level of intelligence?

I think that is one positive about being the way I am: I can be whatever I am supposed to be, in any given situation. Ha if I didn't pay any attention to what people wanted out of me, I would have screwed everything up by now. I feel like a salesperson: the customer knows best.

My response: Ha, I'm sort of glad that you feel like you are more ISTP; people sometimes ask me if sociopaths aren't just INTJs.

I hate taking personality tests. I never know what to answer to questions like "do you have an emotional attachment to your friends?" Part of me does, but I also think it can't be that deep of an attachment if I cast them aside like used paper napkins when I'm done with them. An easier question would be, "Do you sometimes feel infatuation for things and people?" Because personality tests are not really designed for people like us, I answer most of them in radically different ways depending on context or my mood.

Maybe we do have personalities/selves but just multiple ones? The weirdest thing for me is to not know which self would be most appropriate in a given situation. Charming? Straightforward? Commanding? Cautious? It helps for me to have a buzzword to focus on, one primary goal, like the cliché actor asking the director "what's my motivation?" Because without it, I frequently can wander blindly when in a new situation or meeting a new person, slipping through several different "approaches" until I find one that works. This is never the first impression I want to make, but it is what it is.

Soft sociopathic traits

A lot emails that I receive from people describing their sociopathic traits strike me as being not quite placeable (nothing inconsistent with the diagnosis, but nothing really suggesting it either). This one seems to share a remarkable number of the "soft" sociopathic traits -- not quite in any textbook or diagnostic criterion, they are still traits that show up remarkably frequently in the sociopaths I have come to know. These soft traits include things like sexual fluidity, the particular instrumental way that charm is used, the obliviousness to certain things and hyper awareness at others.  From a reader:

As I’m sure since the subsequent publication of your book you receive these types of emails and attempts at correspondence daily, I will attempt to make this little stab at conversation short and sweet. Just a footnote here, I have no desire to exploit you and this is not an attempt to parallel our experiences. I suppose I am contacting you to relay some experiences of mine and perhaps receive some feedback.

My friend recently proposed the term, “sociopath” to me in passing conversation. I laughed off his name calling because I reasoned with myself: I grew up in a loving, stable environment, I have always had friends and significant others and I’ve always been keenly aware of my significance to them. I am not some brooding psychopath. I will admit here that I was unaware of the difference between “psycho” and “socio” and incorrectly found them mutually exclusive. However, the term “sociopath” sizzled in my brain for quite some time and I decided to delve into studying this alleged “disorder” and try to either self-diagnose or abandon the subject completely if it wasn't applicable to me. I reevaluated nearly every memory I can tap into and here’s just a sample of the conclusions I've come to:

By the age of 18, I had been arrested for assault, theft, and possession of criminal tools, vandalism, and a negligible complicity charge. At the various times of these altercations, I always was able to weasel my way out of the worst possible consequences. In my family’s eyes, I was a merely a victim of circumstance of hanging around the “wrong crowd” or being “scared, anxious” to be going away to college. At the time I think I believed those explanations myself. I have been in several altercations and what I refer to as “battles” with my family members often resulting in periods of estrangement with them.

Each one of my relationships throughout high school and my young adult life ended with a bang. The first ended in me cheating and spreading a rumor that my boyfriend had essentially taken advantage of me sexually. The second ended in cheating on my part as well and in a fiery battle with her parents that ended in a restraining order against me. The third was almost identical to the second. During these relationships, I would always befriend my significant other’s circle of friends and more often than not they all ended up liking me more than my girlfriend/boyfriend. I never felt particularly attached to my boyfriends or girlfriends, I always felt like, “well, I’m young, I don’t have to care about them or take these relationships seriously.” I have always identified as a bisexual. I like the differences between sexes and have never been able to adequately identify with one or the other. I am sexually fluid. This has always stirred confusion with those who have been in relationships with me and I've often heard they feel threatened by everyone around me, male or female.

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I was considered above average. I was and still am an avid reader and consider myself to be fluent in many musical instruments. I excelled in every activity I tried, guitar, drums, English, horseback riding, swimming, and softball. Music became somewhat of an obsession for me and I have become integrated in an underground community of musicians. I won several awards in academics and was able to attain a generous scholarship to a school I couldn’t otherwise afford. My family is exceedingly proud of me and I have always known I was the “favorite” to my various grandparents, aunts, and uncles.

I began waitressing at a small diner at the age of 16. I charmed my way into the hearts of many customers who still contact me after transferring to a different store several hours away. I consider myself to be the ideal employee, by befriending upper management and kissing a little ass I am mostly free to do as I please without consequence. However, I have managed to get approximately 5 people fired and dozens written up.  

You’re probably wondering why I failed to pick up on these things earlier or even realize how “abnormal” I am. The only explanation I can come up with is that maybe that’s just how the emotional and physical world naturally occurs in my mind. My “normal” is just maybe a variance on the society’s perceived notion of normalcy. I could go on forever but again, I am lazy. I realized rather quickly how much I assume the role of “sociopath” by textbook definition and although I have statistically come into contact with many sociopaths, you are the only one I have found to be formally diagnosed and have a way to contact.

The definitive sociopath test?

I was talking with a socio reader about the possibility of someone developing a foolproof method for identifying/diagnosing sociopaths (e.g. brain scans), and what that would mean in terms of our own sense of self and identity:

You know, I have given a lot of thought over the last year about whether this sociopath label really does fit or if I am trying to make it fit when it really doesn’t. As we both agree, in the end it doesn’t really matter anyway. The value of the exercise for me though, was conceptualizing my life experience in an entirely different but ultimately much more enlightening way. That is what matters.

I think the people that say that you and your readers are not sociopaths are right and wrong. They are right to the degree that people like us are indeed not like the prison/institutionalized population. Obviously. They are wrong to then surmise that the label has little to no direct link to what is referred to the suite of behaviors collectively referred to as sociopathy. Everyone assumes all sociopaths must look exactly like the ones in prison and if you don’t, the label can have zero relevance to you (or me). That assumption is based on a lack of research as well as a lack of independent thinking. I know. Even as I don’t wrap myself up with that label or identify all of myself with it, I nevertheless recognize it’s utility. I don’t have to say any of this to you. I’m preaching to the choir.

Bottom line for me anyway, is that I wouldn’t be shocked to discover that my brain looks normal. It really could be that those psychopaths whose brains look different are different in precisely those ways that gave rise to behaviors that landed them in prison to begin with. It might go back to the whole primary versus secondary psychopath distinction. The primaries may be the way they are because of their brains while the secondaries may be the way they are because of social/childhood issues. Maybe you and I would fall under the secondary category. Who knows? Although I do think it would be interesting to have more scientific research done on this, research involving an entirely non-institutionalized population of would be sociopaths. There would be many correlations between the two groups I’m sure (prison verses non-imprisoned), but I imagine there would also be some interesting and maybe even startling differences. While we’d share traits like a relative absence of conscience, low empathy, shallow emotions, an aptness for deception and manipulation, grandiose sense of self, etc, all the traits that set us apart from the psychological average, there might be some very important reasons why you and I aren’t in prison while the prototypical sociopaths are. Has there been any research done in this particular area?

Having said all of that, an exciting possibility that the naysayers brings up is that maybe we are so different that no one has thought of a label for us yet. Maybe we aren’t sociopaths at all. Maybe we represent undiscovered country, psychologically speaking. Who knows?

In any event, finding out your brain looks perfectly normal wouldn’t change a thing about your life experience up to this point, would it? It would be like a homosexual (I like using homosexuals as examples) discovering that his brain looks precisely like a heterosexual’s would. So what? Would that knowledge change him into a hetero? Would he suddenly start liking women? Would the results of this scan invalidate everything he’d been through his entire life? Would he have to force himself to like women because a brain scan indicates that his preference for men may have more to do with how he grew up and less to do with his genes and hormones? I don’t think anyone would seriously suggest that other than the religious fundies. I think it would be similar for you (and for me). Ditto for Hare’s checklist. I have already surmised that I wouldn’t score high enough on his list to justify labeling me as a Hare psychopath. I’m guesstimating that I’d get somewhere between a 22 and 26 tops and in the US, you have to score 30. What would it mean to have that guess proved right if the test was administered to by Hare himself? Not much.

I asked myself why I did the verbal diarrhea thing with this response. It’s because your email struck a chord. I spent so many years trying to be normal. I kept thinking that if I found my calling or found my true love (that was back at the beginning of my search phase, in my early twenties… my ex-wife quickly disabused me of that fantasy), found god, found spiritual enlightenment, I would then be full of all those emotions I lacked. I thought it was the absence of these things that created the absence, the vacancy, I saw within myself. That’s what movies and books and TV and my family and friends all told me in one way or the other. I was stupid and blind enough to believe them. It wasn’t until a few years ago, when the search began to look like the dead end it was, that I finally started giving up hope. During that winding down period I had my “wow, I have went about my search in an entirely self centered way” insight. You know the drill, seducing, manipulating, then abandoning once I discovered that the other person or persons didn’t have what I was looking for. I hadn’t thought of it that way at all up until that moment of insight. I suppose that in a very real sense, I discovered that I was a bit of an emotional vampire. A year or so later, I found your blog and for the first time, someone else had my experiences. Someone else knew what I had gone through because they had gone through life in a very similar way. Even down to the moment in your childhood when you knew something had changed and that you couldn’t go back! I’d never told any of my closest friends or family that, yet you’d been through it yourself! Finding out my brain looks normal wouldn’t alter any of that. Not one single bit. In fact and if anything, it would only deepen the mystery. If we can’t point to any specific neural distinctions, then what the hell created the differences? Why do I not understand guilt on an emotional level after all these years? Why are my emotions so superficial? Why don’t I have a stable sense of self? Etc.

Ok, I’ll stop now. You just got me thinking for a bit, that’s all. What would it mean to you to discover that per your brain scan or per Hare’s checklist, you can’t possibly be a socio/psychopath?

It's funny, how we're always going on about self-awareness and self-knowledge, trying to ferret out or at least understand any delusions. Sometimes I wonder if so much self-introspection can actually create delusions, though. I know how easy (sickly easy) it is for me to compartmentalize and have one part of me trick the other part. I've done it in the past and lived lies for years. Am I currently in the middle of a delusion? Is everything I think I know about who I am and what sort of world I live in completely delusional? Including being socio-leaning?

Sometimes I think to myself, if my life depended on it, would it be easier for me to prove that I am a sociopath, or that I am not. Interestingly, I think it is my "sociopathic" traits that would make either scenario seem about equally likely or unlikely. There does seem to be something to it all, though, something consistent between me and other people that find me at this site, although I'm not wedded to the term "sociopath." Sometimes it's creepy what I discover in common with those who email me. Whatever I am, there must be a lot of others like me.

Fictional sociopaths: Tom Ripley

A reader sent me a movie clip with this description:

Also, here’s another video that I always resonated with. It’s John Malkovich’s portrayal of Tom Ripley in Ripley’s Game. I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen that movie, but it’s nicely done. You could say Ripley’s game boils down to manipulating what had been a relatively innocent man into committing murder. In fact, the scene starts right after they’ve killed several mobsters on a train. They got off the train and are in a station restroom (the relevant part starts at 3:40 and ends at about 5:10). “The one thing I know is we are constantly being born.” Very true indeed, truer than most people realize.


[Ripley has just helped Jonathan kill three mobsters]

Jonathan Trevanny: [crying] I know I should thank you, because I wouldn't be alive now if you hadn't helped me.... but I can't. I can't say thank you. I don't know anything about you. Who are you?

Tom Ripley: I'm a creation. A gifted improviser. I lack your conscience and, when I was young, that troubled me. It no longer does. I don't worry about being caught because I don't think anyone is watching. The world is not a poorer place because those people are dead — it's not. It's one less car on the road, a little less noise and menace. You were brave today. You'll go home and put some money away for your family. That's all.

Jonathan Trevanny: If you "lack my conscience," then why did you help me on the train?

Tom Ripley: [smiles] I don't know, but it doesn't surprise me. If there's one thing I know, it's that we're constantly being born.

Jonathan Trevanny: But why me? Why did you pick me?

Tom Ripley: Partly because you could. Partly because you insulted me. But mostly because that's the game. [checks watch] We need to catch this flight. Shall we?

John Malcovich's are some of the most convincing portrayals of a sociopath I've seen.

Parent to a sociopath (part 2)

While I was watching We Need to Talk About Kevin, I thought several times about Andrew Solomon's book Far From the Tree, in which he writes about outlier children (i.e. children who are quite different from their parents, e.g. deafness, dwarfism, disability, genius, criminality, etc.). He discusses the difficulties that such children present to their parents, who have hoped to see their own unfulfilled promise attained vicariously through the lives of their children, and the great disappointment that can accompany the realization that their child is not who they imagined he would be (via Brain Pickings):

In the subconscious fantasies that make conception look so alluring, it is often ourselves that we would like to see live forever, not someone with a personality of his own. Having anticipated the onward march of our selfish genes, many of us are unprepared for children who present unfamiliar needs. Parenthood abruptly catapults us into a permanent relationship with a stranger, and the more alien the stranger, the stronger the whiff of negativity. We depend on the guarantee in our children’s faces that we will not die. Children whose defining quality annihilates that fantasy of immortality are a particular insult; we must love them for themselves, and not for the best of ourselves in them, and that is a great deal harder to do. Loving our own children is an exercise for the imagination. … [But] our children are not us: they carry throwback genes and recessive traits and are subject right from the start to environmental stimuli beyond our control. 

The most directly applicable We Need to Talk About Kevin quote:

Having exceptional children exaggerates parental tendencies; those who would be bad parents become awful parents, but those who would be good parents often become extraordinary.

Solomon also looks at the unique struggles of children who are born to parents that do not share the same defining traits. He first identifies the distinction between vertical identities, those we inherit from our parents like ethnicity or religion, and horizontal identities:

Often, however, someone has an inherent or acquired trait that is foreign to his or her parents and must therefore acquire identity from a peer group. This is a horizontal identity. Such horizontal identities may reflect recessive genes, random mutations, prenatal influences, or values and preferences that a child does not share with his progenitors. Being gay is a horizontal identity; most gay kids are born to straight parents, and while their sexuality is not determined by their peers, they learn gay identity by observing and participating in a subculture outside the family. Physical disability tends to be horizontal, as does genius. Psychopathy, too, is often horizontal; most criminals are not raised by mobsters and must invent their own treachery. So are conditions such as autism and intellectual disability.

(A quick note, I think the reference to psychopaths is hilariously demonizing, especially given Solomon's great care to withhold normative judgments of "bad" or "good" for the other outlier characteristics he discusses. To illustrate, imagine if he had used a similar negatively slanted statement for gay horizontal identity "most kids are born to straight parents, so must invent their own perversion.")

Solomon, who actually is gay with straight parents (but apparently feels that he did not invent his own perversion, unlike sociopaths), came up with his theory on vertical and horizontal identity when he noticed that he shared common identity issues with deaf children of hearing parents:

I had been startled to note my common ground with the Deaf, and now I was identifying with a dwarf; I wondered who else was out there waiting to join our gladsome throng. I thought that if gayness, an identity, could grow out of homosexuality, an illness, and Deafness, an identity, could grow out of deafness, an illness, and if dwarfism as an identity could emerge from an apparent disability, then there must be many other categories in this awkward interstitial territory. It was a radicalizing insight. Having always imagined myself in a fairly slim minority, I suddenly saw that I was in a vast company. Difference unites us. While each of these experiences can isolate those who are affected, together they compose an aggregate of millions whose struggles connect them profoundly. The exceptional is ubiquitous; to be entirely typical is the rare and lonely state.

I have noticed (and mention in the book) that there has been a lot of push back on labeling people, particularly the pathologizing of more than half the population. How could it possibly be that fewer people in the population are normal than abnormal?! But which seems more plausible -- that we are all cookie cutter neurologically the same? Or that we are all on a bell curve of myriad different human traits, our particular blend making us both completely unique (we actually are neurologically all special snowflakes, it turns out) and yet share identifiable traits in common across the entire swath of humanity. And that's a good thing. Charles Darwin remarked on the great variety of the human species:

As the great botanist Bichat long ago said, if everyone were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty. If all our women were to become as beautiful as the Venus de’ Medici, we should for a time be charmed; but we should soon wish for variety; and as soon as we had obtained variety, we should wish to see certain characteristics in our women a little exaggerated beyond the then existing common standard.

Despite the many advantages of diversity, many families (and society) tend to treat horizontal identities as disorders that we would hope to eventually eliminate from the species:

In modern America, it is sometimes hard to be Asian or Jewish or female, yet no one suggests that Asians, Jews, or women would be foolish not to become white Christian men if they could. Many vertical identities make people uncomfortable, and yet we do not attempt to homogenize them. The disadvantages of being gay are arguably no greater than those of such vertical identities, but most parents have long sought to turn their gay children straight. … Labeling a child’s mind as diseased — whether with autism, intellectual disabilities, or transgenderism — may reflect the discomfort that mind gives parents more than any discomfort it causes their child.

(Is Solomon correct here? I think there are actually a lot of people who think that white Christian men are superior to other races/genders/religions, gay people are an abomination, autistic and disabled people are a drain to scarce social resources (same for sociopaths), etc. And perhaps their beliefs are not wrong, or at least it would depend on what measuring stick and set of values you use to judge.)

But I don't think it's the labels that are harmful, necessarily. Indeed, labels can be a boon to all outsiders forming their own horizontal identities. Rather, the problem seems to be the xenophobic system of enforcing social norms that encourages expressions of repulsion and shaming at what is too foreign to be relatable, whether it is feelings of disgust regarding gay people (especially gay people who do not feel the need to hide or tone down their "gayness"), the practices of other cultures (especially things that our own western culture has outgrown, like arranged marriages and modest clothing for women), or the backwards beliefs of religious "cults" (whereas our own religious beliefs are seen as perfectly plausible and normal).

Finally, Solomon describes what eventually happens to the mother in We Need to Talk About Kevin (and a hopeful statement for all parents of sociopathic children):

To look deep into your child’s eyes and see in him both yourself and something utterly strange, and then to develop a zealous attachment to every aspect of him, is to achieve parenthood’s self-regarding, yet unselfish, abandon. It is astonishing how often such mutuality has been realized — how frequently parents who had supposed that they couldn’t care for an exceptional child discover that they can. The parental predisposition to love prevails in the most harrowing of circumstances. There is more imagination in the world than one might think.

Tell me doctor (part (3)

(cont.)


High school was boringly uneventful. I saw myself forced to attend to my senior prom dance, because my mother wouldn’t let me off it. So, to please her, I gave in. By the time I got to college I was more than sure there was more to than just some temporary ‘bad attitude’. It had to be. It wasn’t a phase anymore. I had been like this my whole life, placing aside any plausible traumatic events, which I handled with gold star ease. Of course, not being able to ask anyone and having more important things to handle, it had to take the backseat.

Nowadays, little things have popped up and made me wonder about a term. A word. Little things like my inability to make eye contact with myself. In the mirror. Like anybody else. Of course, the ability itself is there. But the seeing “beyond” the mirror thing, which people talk about, that, that I can’t do. Why? Simply because I see nothing. So, I become frustrated. Not that it means much to me to see something, it doesn’t. My eyes work perfectly, regardless of the abuse I put them through, and are visually pleasant. This vacancy frustrates me because, when I make eye contact with others, I can read them. I can see them far more clearly than by just reading the regular signs (behavior, mannerism, tone of voice, word choices, etc.) And with myself, I see nothing.

There are also the concepts of Empathy, Sympathy and Conscience. Those are fun. For about five minutes.

Not too long ago, I decided to bluntly ask, “What’s the difference between Empathy and Sympathy?” Needless to say, it caught those in the room off guard.

The question came to mind, and out of my mouth, because they were watching some 48 hour TV program which collects money for a foundation. It builds specialized hospitals for disabled children who do not have the resources for whatever problems they carry. Those in the room, they were very— touched. Me, I intellectually sympathized with the whole ordeal but found the program nauseating. And the reactions to it, those, those I couldn’t bear with. They were uncalled for, really. At least from my perspective. I was, I guess, disgusted.

But after identifying and understanding where the repulsion came from, I knew it was because I did not understand what was going on, emotionally. I don’t get that sort of thing. I can’t. In fact, after people tried to, aftershock, explain what the difference between the words was, I was still in need for a more technical meaning. Technically. That’s how I understand things. I looked up the meaning and description of both. 

Dictionaries. Google. They understand me.

To this point, I still think both words to be the same. I sense them as false pity. But you can’t say that to people because they’ll get hurt. Insulted. Guarded. Betrayed. “False.” It triggers a lot for the average folk. I’ve noticed. I have also noticed that I don’t know what being sad truly feels like. Much less depressed. 

People have made me wonder about a lot of things I’ve never experienced. And about those things which I enjoy but others see as abnormal. Like solace. Peers often see the pleasure I take on being alone as “sad”. To me, that’s a repugnant thought. It’s not sad, it’s liberating. It lets me breathe. Relax. Not having to put up with human interactions, it’s a relief. But again, I must create relationships because it’s boring when you’re alone for too long. I don’t need people but I’ve always liked observing human interaction. Even when I partake.

I remember, when I was a kid, hiding out on our house’s rooftop. Under my bed. Anywhere. Anywhere to be out of reach. Sometimes I was found, sometimes I wasn’t. Either way, the ending to these episodes were always the same. Me, coming back to the family as if nothing had happen. Because, well, nothing had happen. Though I could tell my parents were angry. Mad at me for disappearing. I never acknowledged their frustration. I didn’t see why I should care. I still don’t. If they were worried, angry or scared, it was not my problem. As far as I was concerned, I could do as I pleased. I mean, I wasn’t hurting anybody, technically. So it was okay. Was it too much to ask just to be by myself? Nope. Not to me. Even if I was five. These “disappearing acts” were none of their business and so they remained.

Then comes my thoughts on Conscience. Which I thought were the same as everyone else’s. Apparently, and accordingly to a certain book, I was wrong. Making it to the point, what I think of Conscience is just a taught behavior. A mimic. Like table manners while growing up. Our parents, the surrounding responsible adults, teach us to differ between Right and Wrong, in the same way they were taught by their own. That’s how I see conscience. Thing is, that could also be considered as the superego. I guess that’s what I get for deconstructing every little thing. Deconstructionist. I should add that to my resume.

Another subject that leaves me at odds is Mortality. Others’ and my own. I don’t think I see it properly. Even my father’s death didn’t affect me as much as expected to. Me being on the verge of dying (under the knife, in various occasions), didn’t affect me. Family members dying, friends... nothing. At this point, and maybe it’s because of the many years as a patient that have me trained but, none of that affects me as I see with other people. I remember being the only one with dry eyes at my father’s funeral. It was, weird.

It is due to this lack of--whatever it is that makes people so emotionally invested, that my mother says she’s scared of me. She is afraid because of my “apathetic”, “tactless”, “unemotional”, “shameless” and “antisocial” behavior. Her words not mine. Of course, this is something I cannot help. Seeing death as just the end of a cycle. It happens and that’s that. I understand that people miss people. I mean, I miss my father’s company, now and then, but there’s nothing tragic about it. Not even if they were killed, or murdered.

Because of this, people tend to see me as cruel. Mean. Cold. That last might be true. But Cruel? That I only am when interested in being so. For example, something I should feel ashamed about, though I’m not, to enjoy psychological torment. It’s a real thrill. Most of the time, just to be perverse. For pure sadistic fun. I can’t help myself. As said, I should feel ashamed, but I’m not. Then again, I rarely am. And when I become aware that I should be, I flaunt my wrong doings. As you may have noticed.

Anyway, to finally put an end to this novel, my most recent realization. 
One day, not too long ago, while sitting about, thinking, it came to me like a car crashing on the back of my head. “I feel like a ghost.” The words merely mouthed but quite present.

I’ve always been aware of this inertia. This suspended animation. This separate life I’ve carried. But I’ve never been really able to verbalize it accurately. Until now. The best way I can put it, it’s like the entirety of your existence is parallel to those around you. Like watching life take place, observing it happen. Every single thing. But you’re behind a plastic sheet. A transparent, endless and inescapable curtain which allows you to be seen, to be superficially acknowledged by others, “the living”, but you never really partake in their lives. You exist. Sure. But you’re not quite with them. That’s what being what I am feels like. Whatever it is I may be.

Since I was a child I always danced around the thought of disappearing. One glorious day would come and I will take off, without a word to anyone, and disappear. For good. Never to be heard of, or from, again. My childhood fantasy. A dream. Some kids dream of being a princess, of adventures, of growing up and being like mommy and daddy. Me? I dreamed of isolation. Of finally being able to be absolutely free. To be myself without calculating every word, every movement, every thought. To be alone. What a dream.

So, do tell. Should I seek psychiatric help or, is it all manageable enough? Regardless of what the answer might be, I politely thank you for taking the time and reading this unnecessarily long email. Have a good one.