very sad, but calm day today

I'm taking this class called The Execptional Person.  It's so awful.  "The Exceptional Person" is the new euphemism for weirdos and j.d.'s and gimps and simps and 'tards.  Of course, we can't use any of those words, anymore, because we're so fucking thoughtful and sensitive.  We wouldn't want to use any words that would make the troublesome little fuckers feel bad about themselves.  

Please understand, this animosity is directed towards the smug, sanctimonious people who decide who is the exception and what we're all going to do about it, not the victims.  I'm having a really hard time with the last few chapters, because we're discussing the kinds of processing problems that I had as a kid, that made my life torture.  Things that it was adamantly denied I had.  There was nothing wrong with me, nosirree-Bob, that a little trying harder wouldn't help.  Even now my parents deny that I'm anything but exceptionally bright.  And a little, "awkward."

They think they're helping me.  Don't want me to get a label that would make people treat me differently.  No, it's just my personality/most intimate self that makes people run screaming for the hills.  

And then my teacher says, "Let me describe to you how a kid like this would look to a teacher or schoolmate..." and describes me at age 5 or age ten or age 15.  She sounds like she's quoting from letters my teachers sent home.  I cry and cry when I'm reading the chapter, and then I sit through the lecture and pretend I'm fine.  Wouldn't want to do anything exceptional.

Today was a really hard lecture.  I felt totally vulnerable and exposed, and the whole discussion was like, "Why are these people so weird?  Why don't they just do what everybody else does?  That sounds crazy and dangerous.  I wouldn't want to be around that person."  I really wanted to tell them, but I was so emotional I knew I was going to seem crazy and dangerous if I tried to explain.

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I didn't feel understood and supported, and I didn't want to be there.  Maybe I just have a persecution complex, but I didn't feel that today's topic was being discussed with the same kind of sympathy that the discussions on other exeptionalities included.  It's probable that I'm just much too sensitive, and overtired, but I felt that a class which had heretofore been painfully aware of everyone's viewpoint turned into a mildly malicious gossip session about someone absent.  

The best I can do is to say this.  I seem to make a lot of people uncomfortable.  If you are one of these people, I am sorry, and I think I can explain why it is.  I perceive life a lot differently than you do.  Nobody knows why.  There are hundreds of reasons, from genetics to environment to brain lesions, and almost everyone has an opninion.  But perceive it differently I do, and part of that makes me into a really intense mirror.  Another part of it lets me see a lot more of the silly arbitrariness of life than most people usually do, or maybe it just makes it bother me more. 

People are basically just perceiving machines, pattern recognizing machines.  My machine just works a little different.  Like, I bought mine in Europe.  It pretty much does what yours does, but it's geared a little differently, and you have to work on it with a different kind of screwdriver.  It's missing a couple of functions yours has, but it can do these other things.  Maybe the other things are more important to me than whatever yours can do that is really important to you but that I just don't care about.

I really want to explain this lucidly and the part of my brain that knows how to do that feels like it's packed with broken glass and barbed wire.  I just can't do it.  

I'll stop trying for a moment and leave you with this final thought:

Jesus, why can't you just be like everybody else?  Would it kill you to go along to get along?

What, if everybody jumped off a cliff you would too?  Be your own person!

-took a nap, other side of brain had this for me when I woke up:

(There's a reason I'm fucked up, and it's called Human Culture.  It causes people to do crazy things and then rationalize them much more virulently than I ever thought about.  In its highly concentrated form it is poisonous, and if I make you very uncomfortable, I can be reasonably sure you are so contaminated with it as to be a danger to me, and cause you to avoid me by being rude and unkind to you.)

Thank you, other side of brain.  Sometimes you scare me, but I like your confidence!