Technically, it’s called “The 160 Greatest Arnold Schwarzenegger Movie Quotes”, but when you have 160 of something in a list, you probably have all of them, don’t you think?

So saying they are the greatest is meaningless. They’re also the worst.

It’s occurred to me quite recently that I have never been all that emotionally stable.

It’s not an easy or fun thing to realize about oneself, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that it is true. Even far before my current (very long) bout of mental illness, I was not altogether there. Even before my problems with depression as a teenager, I was a strange child who was prone to incomprehensible moods and strange ideas and times when it felt as though reality itself was far away and I was not so much a person but as some sort of alien inexpertly piloting a meat-based space ship around an Earth it did not understand.

I think I have always known this on a deep level, but I kept it buried below the surface of my consciousness, paved under and builts atop and forgotten like the catacombs of Paris, because I had to get on with life and pretending everything was okay was the easiest and most natural and simplest way to do so.

Why? Well, because I was all alone in my own little world. Nobody shared it with me and nobody was paying attention to me at all and so nobody noticed and it is surprisingly easy to ignore something, even something as profound about yourself as whether you spend part of your life half out of your mind, if everyone else is ignoring it too. In many ways, nothing is truly real to us unless someone else perceives it too.

Even something like being half crazy.

It was the isolation and loneliness that did it, I think. It is simply not natural for any human being to grow up as emotionally isolated and frightened and alone as I did. It had a profound effect on me even in elementary school. I think I have taken deep tissue damage from so long in deep cold, and the only reason that fact has been hidden from me for so long is that no matter what it is, no matter how bad it is, when it starts when you are a ltitle kid, you think of it as normal.

As far as I know, on an emotional level, life has always been like this. It’s taken this long in my life for me to realize that it doesn’t have to be like this, and just how badly damaged I am compared to normal people.

Even as a kid in elementary school, I would have this periods of feeling highly disoriented and disconnect and disassociated from reality. I can clearly remember days when during the walk home from school, I would be in such an acute emotional state that nothing seemed real and it almost felt like I was fading away inside myself, or like I was a deep sea diver and reality was at the bottom of a cold cold ocean. I would have trouble focusing on anything and the walk home would seem like an eerie dream because I couldn’t really feel my surroundings at all. Not over the screaming inner void.

And even if I had realize how wrong this was, and how badly I needed some kind of help, and even if I had somehow plucked up the nerve to try to ask for help in a household where I was largely expected to disappear and fade into the woodwork and pretend I didn’t exist, I am not sure I would have been able to put into words what was happening to me in a way that makes sense to anyone.

Mom, I don’t feel right. I feel lonely and scared and like I can’t stay connected to reality. I feel so cold sometimes and I get bullied at school all the time and I am so very alone and so very frightened. I get so scared it’s not even fear any more, it’s something else. I need help, Mom.

Maybe if I had been able to say all that back then, things would have been different. Hindsight.

At least this insight helps explain why I am so incapable as an adult. I have been very ill for a very long time and it’s no wonder that I am not real good at coping with reality. I have, in essence, had a lingering undiagnosed untreated malignant debilitating illness for most of my life. It is hard to imagine how much damage this has done, or how badly it has warped my development.

I am lucky to be as sane as I am, considering.