Time to talk about what a strange kid I was again.

First, let’s go over the list of oddities :

1. I never play-acted scenarios with my toys.  I have seen plenty of depictions of how normal children play in the media. They use their toys as props and characters for improvised storytelling in order to entertain themselves. Presumably, this is the result of a healthy instinct to explore social space in a safe environment. I never did this. I would not have seen the point. To me, toys were just physical objects that provided very little entertainment. The idea that I was supposed to add the entertainment myself would not have occurred to me.
2. I never had an imaginary friend.  I was far too literal-minded for that, Too logical. It’s like I never had a “magical” phase where reality was only limited by my imagination and where I could believe in things like imaginary friends. And yet I know having an imaginary friend is considered quite normal and healthy for kids in a certain age range. They must also come from some instinct to explore social space and develop the self via mirroring it in the imaginary friend. But I never did that. It was a total non-starter, because even as a preschooler I knew that said friend was not there. 
3. I never physically explored my environment in a hands-on way.  By that, I mean I never played in the sandbox, got into my father’s toolbox, played anything more active than Scrabble, or did anything else that would have stimulated me to develop a better relationship between my mind, my body, and my environment. Even before I became agoraphobic, when I would wander the neighborhood out of boredom, I was just a spectator. I looked at things. I eavesdropped on adult conversations. I’d find spots where the sun felt really nice. But I never played around with random physical objects or built things or anything else like that. That was yet another instinct that never kicked in or that I ignored.
4. I never feared nor respected the authority of adults.  I assumed myself to be their equals on a fundamental level. In that sense I have never experienced authority as I have seen it in others. I have never felt like there were people above me who know better than I do and who have my best interests at heart and therefore I should do what they say. Part of that must be a result of my being so bright – that gave me an enormous amount of intellectual self-confidence. But on another level, it’s yet another example of how social instincts (these ones hierarchical) never kicked in for me. And finally, the big one :
5. I never played with other kids.  As patient readers know, I was a very lonely child who had no friends. I didn’t know how to make friends and I didn’t have any of the usual activity-based opportunities because the other kids wanted to do things I did not enjoy – namely playing like a normal kid. As a result, my social isolation was nearly complete. I went to school and got great grades and came home and went to my room without interacting with anybody on any meaningful level. And this continued day after day of just trudging through life.

I’m sure there’s more but that will do for now.

One pattern is clear : I didn’t listen to my instincts. It’s tempting to say they weren’t there or never kicked in, but that’s not true. I think they were there but my too-logical mind filtered them out as noise.

Because they didn’t “make sense”. Why would I suddenly feel like doing something I had never done before and that involved a lot of risk? What an irrational thought. Better to just stay in my rigid mould and wait for this strange urge to pass.

Once again, I find myself saying : the idea of doing something just because I felt like it would not have occurred to me. That wouldn’t have “made sense”. These feelings frightened me for that very reason. They made me feel like I was going crazy, and by a far too strict definition, I was, because I had these urges to do things that did not make sense or seem logical.

To my nascent mind, following the instinct and seeing what happened would have seemed far too risky, though I doubt I would have been able to tell you what, exactly, I would have been risking.

Chaos, I suppose. Going from a known state to an unknown one. Walking a road without knowing where it goes.

Whbich brings me to the other pattern : exploration. Like I have discussed here before, I did very little exploring as a kid. I was too scared of everything.

This was not absolute, of course. I did explore a bit in certain situations. But for the most part, I went where I was told and stayed where I was put.

The trauma of being raped at the tender age of four left me, I think, with a completely shattered sense of safety and a very high background anxiety level. Between  this fear and my too-logical mindset, exploratory urges never stood a chance.

And that’s bad.  We have all these instincts for very good reasons and following them is vitally necessary for our psychosocial development. By reatreating into my mind and becoming such a timid and fearful kid who did not trust anything he could not predict and control, I was cut off from most of what would be considered a normal childhood.

And the worst part is that because I was so bright and well-spoken and intellectually self-confident, I didn’t come across as having any problems at all.

I was so desperate for any kind of validation that I presented only a bright, happy, appealing face to the world of adults.

Add in the fact that I was both timid and somewhat hard to deal with at times, and it’s no wonder that most adults chose to ignore me.

I couldn’t write a better formula for self-destruction.

But hey…. I was only a kid.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow,.