Self-Professed Insanity

It's very easy to see just by looking at me, who the people are that I live my life for and who I used to live my life for. If you look close enough, you'll see the physical signs and symbols and if you ask the right questions, nothing will remain a mystery about me. It's so obvious to see what drives and has driven me in the past. It's so simple to identify where my heart has been invested and where it continues to dwell. I'm an open book really, if you ignore the fake lock that pretends to bind me,like a pretentious child's diary.

There's a girl around my neck. She's my sister and she's made of gold. I always have her with me because I've never met her. It was through her death that I was given the opportunity for life and thus to her I feel indebted, guilty almost, because I know things would have been so very different had she lived - had life been fair. I think about her every day and I wonder what it was that caused God to take her away and leave me here instead. I call her my guardian angel because it only makes sense to do so - I'm sure she's saved me more times than I am even aware of. I live for her because it wasn't in God's design for her to do so herself. It may be somewhat strange to say this of a five week old baby, but she's my role model. In the five weeks that she was on this earth, she touched and changed more people than I probably have in my 19 years of life. She has taught me that love knows not the bounds of mortality but rather it transcends all that which is strictly human and all that is bound within time. I didn't even need to know her or meet her yet she is one of the closest people to my heart.

There is a boy on my wrist. He didn't ask to be there... rather I crossed a psychotic line of sorts and drew his name in blood on the parchment that was my flesh. It has proven to be one of the stupidest things I have ever done. However, I do not regret having done it. I look down at the fading scars and I still see the blood mixed with my own tears as my mind reeled from the pure torment that raged within my head. I had told him that I couldn't love properly - this was at a time where I was seemingly devoid of all feeling. Everything felt fake, posed and enveloped in numbness - I could not have lied to him at the time by saying that I truly loved him because I really didn't know if I did. He tried to make me see that there was love within our friendship even though I was stubborn in not just immediately believing him. He did everything that a good friend ought to have done in that situation... And then later that night, my twisted mind went on some psychotic rampage in an attempt to prove to myself that I did in fact love him as well as every other friend of mine. So now I have his name on my wrist with nothing much more to show for it except a lost friendship and an awkward question to answer when people happen to look closely enough to see the scars. It seems as though his name on my wrist did the exact opposite of cementing the love between friends but rather it set me up for the downward spiral that would become my life in the following year. I created a world of hurt for myself that proved to be completely stupid, immature and unnecessary. I can apologise a million times to him and to those close to him for the drama I brought about but it won't take back what it did to him, to our friendship, to me. I can't go back in time and change the course that ensued after one misguided action. I can only look back now and be thankful for the lesson it has afforded me - as hard as it has been.

I have a number of old friends etched into my skin - fading memories of all who I've pushed away and all those who simply ran from my idiocy and borderline psychotics. I've often gone too far... I've pushed too much, done little good and manipulated people far too explicitly. I can sit hear and say these things about myself for days on end because I know of all my mistakes and all of the horrible things I've done to people who have done nothing but expect normality from me. In essence, I look back on what my life has been comprised of for the past few years and I cringe at the desperation that it reeks of. I don't know who that miserable, complicated, twisted little girl was. I don't want to remember myself as the monster I once was... even though it probably still lurks within me, waiting to pull me back into an infinite regress of depression and self-inflicted suffering. I don't want to be that way ever again. I don't want to live my life on the edge if it means at any moment I could look over the railing of a balcony as I once did and decide it would be a good way to die. I don't want to ever look at a bottle of painkillers and mentally calculate the amount needed to overdose. I don't to cause my friends to worry about me to the extent that they feel the need to stage mini-interventions and check my wrists every so often for fresh scars. I don't ever want to be that selfish ever again. 

Perhaps I'm schizophrenic and the voices in my head have become somewhat restless. Maybe that's what it is that pulls me back into myself. Maybe that's what I can credit my moments of pure insanity to. It would make so much more sense to me if I were to be diagnosed with some mental illness. I suppose it would make so much more sense to the people around me as well - it would explain so much and, I'm sure, confirm some of their suspicions. Also, then some psychiatrist could give me a concoction of pills that would make me better. So that none of the people who I have come to love, cherish and adore would ever have to be subjected to the overflow of my warped mind. It would be a guarantee that I would no longer hurt or annoy anyone. Would being classed as insane not just make everything that much easier? Or do I have to further grapple with the task of balancing the expectation of normality or conformity with the nature of my not-so-normal mind?

--J.

Why I'm A Weirdo Part 5: Kelly

I think this shall be the last instalment of the Why I'm A Weirdo series... There are a few other theories on personality development but they focus slightly more on one's behaviour and more how we learn to do things. So I'll be wrapping up the series with the cognitive approach... 

The major theorist of this approach is George Kelly and he claims that since we are rational beings (yes, believe it or not - women, although sometimes irrational, are rational beings too!), we make sense of the world using personal constructs. Personal constructs are representations of the world that we use to make sense of our experience. Therefore, Kelly claims that our personalities are built and develop according to these constructs. 

"An individual's psychological processes (experiences, thoughts, feelings, behaviours) are routed through various pathways by the ways in which he/she anticipates events" 

So Kelly is rather different to the other theorists I've spoken about previously because he doesn't focus so much on the past as much as the future. Our expectations of the outcomes of events or situations brought about by our personal constructs result in the development of 
our personality. 

We believe or anticipate things to happen in a similar way as they have in the past. When things don't go as we expect them to, we re-align our expectations in the future by changing our personal constructs or allowing our personal constructs to become susceptible to change.

We all have personal constructs that are unique to us. However, people who have similar sets of constructs are more likely to have similar experiences, behaviour and feelings. I know, for example, that at one point in my life I was very heavily influenced by a close friend of mine and I was shocked at the time to notice that we would experience and feel similar things and react to things in a similar way but it was because I had aligned my personal constructs to hers - we were, therefore, expecting or anticipating the same or similar outcomes when choosing the appropriate behaviour or feeling.

I like Kelly's theory, partly because he completely ignores the realm of emotion but put a person's personality down to a purely cognitive process. Somehow I find it comforting that all of the problems or weird situations I get myself into are all a result of what I've come up with in my own head and therefore I have the ability to change and control my life.

After reading up on all of these theories, I don't feel like that much of a freak any more... I'm still happily self-diagnosed as weird but that's just so much more exciting than being normal. 

Thank you for taking the time follow this series and if it sparked your interest or you want to know more - get Googling or comment below and I'll fill you in on whatever info you want. Also, if there's any topic you would like me to blog about in the future just let me know (either comment in the box below, hit me up on Twitter: @JillzPopz or Google Plus: Jillian Natalie - there should be a button on the sidebar where you can add me to your circles).

Thank you, Teacups! Keep reading...

--J.