Self Importance and Other Issues

I think that mental illness is less hereditary than it is a problem with familiarity. I am beginning to recognize, in myself, the fact that I become various degrees of unstable depending on my proximity to those that are unstable or mentally ill. The only thing I can think of to compare it to is that of an animal charging. If you see a bull coming at you, nostrils flaring, and you can't manage to get out of the way in time, you instinctively prepare yourself for the impact. Your body curls into a standing fetal position, trying to cover sensitive organs, etc. In that respect, I think that crazy tends to be challenged with crazy. If someone begins a behavior around you suddenly, like screaming incoherently, most people tend to react by retreating, grabbing the person trying to make them focus, or, more commonly, screaming back. This really doesn't accomplish much, but I can see it as some form of emotional block to what the brain perceives as danger.

I feel unstable and out of my normally logical state of mind when I'm closer to crazy. But, like with anything I do, this realization came on me like a shower. That among a few other things this week. I am a random thinker. That is not to say that I'm spacey. Every one of my thoughts tends to originate somewhere perfectly logical. But my mind is the greatest player of the word/identity association game. For example, if I'm thinking about Fruit Leather, I have the tendency to be almost instantly hungry for either white rice and Japanese chicken or Thai food. And if I'm not hungry and I'm thinking about Fruit Leather, I can be almost instantly reminded to take the medicine for my diabetes. The reasons for this are random associations in my head that happen within fractions of a second but of which I remember every link. I first learned about Fruit Leather in Colorado at the office. The girl who introduced them was named Kelly. She was a girl who was totally into hiking. She also worked with Somer, who was from down here. Somer talked me into trying Thai food from a local place once when I was attempting to stray from the normal Taco Bell and Quiznos. The first time wasn't good, but then I found a couple flavors I liked and a place I loved and I was a Thai food junkie. When I'm not hungry, I remember a conversation had with a bunch of us, including Kelly, about the various medical problems that women suffer and hormones. That led me to my own issues, reasons, all the medical problems that go along with my hormone problems, the reason I now have diabetes and voila! my medicine. So that's a small taste of how my brain functions, but the links are not always that closely related. Here are a couple more of the revelations I've come up with this week.

Last semester I was referred to as a kiss ass because one of my professors hit on a nerve that I'm just really good at. Come to think of it, that probably has something to do with the aforementioned way that my brain functions. Anyway, we were researching a 7-page play. We had to present a book on that play as if were were going to film it. Character and story boards, script break down, and reference material to the time and place. The play was J.M. Synge's "Riders to the Sea." Well I was able to find all sorts of really interesting information that tied in to the time frame, what Synge had in mind when he wrote it, the personal influences for the play itself as well as what the characters would really have worn and the origins of the lines in the script. My did my association trick with keywords in Google. It worked, I got an A in the class. This semester, I'm already at it. The first day of classes, I managed to score a job with my previous professor to be the design assistant for the two upcoming plays at UNO. That is part of my class credit. I feel important. Something that tends to lack most of the time in my life. I will end up working my ass off in this venture and in this class where I will lack in others that my importance is no more, or less, than others there. This annoys me about myself, but it's still the truth. I like the feeling that it gives me when someone is visibly impressed with something I've done. Like the rest of humanity, I'm constantly in search of approval on one level or another.

The other thing came to me yesterday. And it started from the word, "sorry." Romance for me is not something I think about often. I repell advances when I get them and I really don't get them often, for obvious reasons. That aside, the idea of romance in normal society is one that sounds pretty and can be very beautiful. But it ends up being annoying because it is so generalized. I suppose you could consider it commercialized romance. A rose, a teddy bear, dinner, holding a door, etc. Tripping it up from time to time helps break the monotony. Too much of it can get to be just as bothersome as having none and a lack of emotion in a relationship.

I have actually stopped dating guys that I would consider to be classically romantic. They are the "nice" guy that I will only end up hurting because I know they will get on my nerves. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of comeback from that. As with anything I write, I thought about this only randomly and analyzed it minimally until I suddenly hit on the subject from a random tangent thought. I whispered "sorry" to someone in class yesterday morning and almost right after, my muse hit me upside the head with the realization.

I like dangerous romance.

To me, romance is less about puppy dogs and flowers and more about menace. Artistic and beautiful menace. Even in minute doses. Being in a large crowd and being whispered to by him. Even something simple as "I can't wait until we're alone." A dark, mysterious look from across the room. Being made to feel utterly feminine solely because of the overwhelming maleness of my counterpart. These are all menacing and dangerous feelings. Let's leave aside that I like to play the historically classic female role in a relationship (women's lib people beware...). That is, I play that role without compromising who I am and my own thoughts and mind. I still want the romance, but I can only take the sweet stuff in small doses.

I don't really have an ending to all of these thoughts. I suppose I hope I never do. As long as I'm still finding out about myself, I'm still alive. In the meantime if any of this information ends up useful to me in a meaningful way, then I'll have accomplished something.