Most people don't know. I am a mermaid.
No not really.
I have gone my whole life feeling like I was not in this world, that I was alien, something too different to belong here.
Longing to be back in the water, wondering if I'd feel more at home there. Wondering if I was meant to be on dry land or if it was all a mistake. (Hey, no freaking out, just a metaphor...)
I get sensory overload. I get panic attacks when things change in a visual way and I am not expecting it. I cannot deal with large noisy crowds.
Sometimes I zone out. Sometimes I lose a chunk of time to daydreaming or just lose it to nothingness.
I hear all the background noise that others zone out and can't hear. All of it. Every appliance buzz, every light fixture. Every beetle click. Living in the city was so very hard.
Sometimes I can't sleep. I stay up playing over and over in my head things I wish I would have said or done. Undo social mistakes. Sometimes I wish I knew how to be a friend or how not to say just the wrong harsh thing at the wrong time. I wish my apologies would be accepted.
I get overwhelmed.
I sensory seek to cancel out. I run my hands under water to calm down.
I crank up music. I dance. I write. Then I hide it all.
When I burst into tears in the cheese aisle because Hy-vee has just remodelled and moved everything and the lighting is super bright and the new freezer cases are LOUD....I just feel like a failure. What is worse is someone seeing it. What is her problem, she can't find cheese?
I hold it together, moderate drama, softly soothe broken hearts, and generally know a lot about a lot of things....but I am not always put together and solid. I hate that about myself. I hate that I have this overwhelmingness that happens.
So when the man of steel locks himself in a closet in grade school? I get that. I used to hide in my own closet or under my own bed to try and make the world smaller. I try to practise and plan and make the world the kind of world I can be in. I notice details though that others don't and sometimes that is just too overwhelming.
Somewhere along the line I realised that I can actually be different, this otherness is my own superpower. So, my apologies to the kind folks in the cheese aisle last year, I will get the hang of the new layout. I go in the mornings, and I almost have a comfort zone about it now.
Just know. Just know. Being different isn't something to be ashamed of, to medicate away, to pretend isn't part of my life.
My life is beautiful and overwhelming and wonderful and just big enough for now. I will continue to try and make it a world I can live in.
I began to understand this more as I have raised three children who are also experiencing this great big world and all of its beauty and noise and structures.
So, friends, be patient with each other, be gentle, be kind. Apologise when you can. Make this world better and not bigger.
