Feel no pain, but my life ain’t easy,
I know I’m my best friend.
~”Escape” by Metallica

I’ve never understood it.

Why I am like I am.

I know my parents didn’t understand, but they tried.

I remember visits to the psychologist at UB-Amherst.

I remember the embarrassment I felt about those visits.

I remember keeping my truth hidden.

The truth I feel inside.

It was blamed on teenage depression (though no meds were used – not that I’d have taken them).  A reaction to the teasing and bullying I was subjected to.

It was an acceptable explanation. Reasonable. Everything made perfect sense to them.

It didn’t make sense to me.  I’d felt it so long before the teasing started.  The disconnect.  The sense of being…different.

While I would play with the other kids, race around outside, laugh, swim in the lake, in pools, dance in a group or solo, lived life like any normal child…

I felt like an outsider. Looking in on these events.

There was only two places I felt complete.

The first was on the stage. Expressing myself in dance and movement. I knew there was an audience, but I couldn’t see them. It was me and the energy on that stage, wrapped in lights and confidence I felt nowhere else.

The other…oh, the other was such a cause for turmoil.

It was in my head.

In my room, buried in books.  Buried in worlds that weren’t here. Weren’t pressing on me.  Weren’t all around.  They were safe, in my head.  Oh, there were dangers, adventures, worlds unlike any other…but there I was in control.  There I wasn’t the odd duck in a sea of normal people.

It wasn’t until high school that I truly found the release of creating my own escape instead of reading the escapes created by others.

When I am in these other worlds, creating them, reading about them, my brain stills.

In every day life the pressures, the chaos, the thoughts in my head swirl and turn until there is no escape.  The smile I wear is genuine, I’m not completely lost to the chaos. When I am in life I am happy.

I can’t call it depression because that isn’t what I feel – it’s just a never ending chaos. It always has been.  For as far back as I can remember it seemed as if my mind never stopped.  When others could sit quiet and relaxed, my brain was still turning over possibilities of life, problems needing answered, questions needing asked. There is no true being still for me. My mind is not happy with ‘still’.

There are times when we are all sitting as a family, but my head is millions of miles away. I get called on it by my husband. Wondering where I am because I am not “here”. It can go on for days sometimes I get so lost. So far gone.

It frustrates my husband. Even when he knows I always “come back”.

I feel so bad for that.

That when I am here…writing…reading…focused and intent…I am lost.

Lost to him.

Lost to my kids.

Lost to this real world that is so chaotic.

Because here is where it is still.

The thoughts stop.

I am in control. Focused on making the lives created under my fingers into something worthwhile.  Fleshing them into real people I could never be.  Worlds I could never live in.  Adventures I would never see otherwise. The chaos there is planned, expected, created by me.

Some days it is hard to pull away from the peace.

And that is wrong.

Real life should be more appealing.

But my ‘daydream’ moments pull far too often.

I’ve never been able to stop it – just ask my parents. I was often chastised for escaping to my room and my books. My Dad feared that it would lead me to a life of addiction like he lived through.

And it has.

Addiction to writing. To the internet.

To the “other”.

I’ve never understood why I am so different.  Why it seems like the way my thoughts function is so different from everyone else.  Why my social anxieties seem so extreme. Why they only go away at the theater (I’m the life of the party at auditions) or online. Why I turn into a blazing ass trying to be nice and “fit in” with the cool kids when I meet others in person.

I don’t know how to change it. To live in the real world. To form “real” friends that I communicate with face to face instead of keyboard to keyboard.

Effort has been made.

But it’s painful. Frightening. Anxiety inducing. Being face to face.

I don’t know how to find an acceptable balance.

But I know that I need to.