Freak

Before I start this, I should say that it's very much me 'emoting' and may come across as middle age man shouts and screams about how shit stuff is.

I'm a freak.

I have been all my life, even when I was a kid.

I don't fit in, don't matter, and don't follow the herd (in part because well what's the point if you don't fit in and don't matter?). In some ways I really like that, like the way it makes me feel independent and strong in myself because I'm not dependent on others or sucking up the same media as everyone else. In others, well, it's less good. I'm tired of having my feelings dismissed as childish or being told that I'm wrong all the time because I see things differently to everyone else (especially when they don't seem to have thought or authenticity to their points of view). I'm tired of feeling like I can't be myself, or work the way that suits me in jobs and to be honest I'm getting to the point where I start to wonder if it's worth continuing with this living business if I have to conform to a way of life that feels fundamentally unsuitable.

Let me stress, I have no plans to commit suicide or hurt myself it's just a feeling that a life where you're forced to be disloyal to yourself and your instincts is no life at all.

I feel it started in childhood, and remember throwing tantrums and being unreasonable, never able to explain why or what was actually wrong. I remember feeling as if I was tolerated but misunderstood because I couldn't explain things. I never liked sport, even as a kid, and remember having my head pulled out of a rugby scrum by a teacher only to be told to 'put your head in properly, you girl', while at the same time my father decided that calling me names would 'toughen me up' (apparently). At the same time, I had 'friends' who even asked my sister 'does anyone actually like him?' on one occasion when they had been invited over for my birthday - which was celebrated early in the summer because it would have been too inconvenient to actually do anything around my real birthday at the end of July.

I grew quieter, more solitary, less trusting. Because why would I trust when I was obviously unacceptable? I had people I knew, sure. People to talk to, but nobody who was a friend.I didn't have those until I went to university and most of my teenage years were spent on my own, reading and losing myself in imaginary worlds. I studied Politics and that worked for me because it felt like a good set of theory and because it was interesting. Away from home I could make friends, cutting my past away like a rotten piece of ham, or something else undesirable. True, I wasn't much of a one for going out and getting drunk (I hate being drunk and I hate being around drunk people), but I made friends and that was wonderful because for the first time I felt like I had people who cared about me and who weren't going to put me down at the first instance, or make me uncomfortable. Even then I found that in later years, I wasn't entirely acceptable to people, but I had enough of a support network to keep me going.

Part of my disconnection is the feeling that I don't belong in the 'male' gender. I mean, I like history, politics and such and I suppose they're sort of male, but if you take the stuff that men seem to bond over most of the time, I'm not interested in any of them. I feel as if I live in a no man's land where I'm neither fish nor fowl and if I'm honest the older I get the less I want to have to do with humanity with it's stupidity, it's generalisations, it's self justifying rationalisations (and I'm not immune to those, I know that, but I'm tired of it all and wish there was more time for art, for dreams, for people to express themselves honestly but without making a fucking production out of it all).

It feels as if the world is just concerned with making profit and the only thing that matters to most people is money and conformity. I don't care much for either, and would be happy if I could live as I wish without being a slave to Mammon.

There's a cartoon on the 'net about 'be yourself, no not like that', and that's how I've felt pretty much everyday of my life.

The problem is that I can't not be myself, I can't compartmentalise, can't shut things off because they're not appropriate at 'moment x' and it sucks, but it's how I'm made.

What I hate is the way I feel I get pushed into roles I can't cope with and don't want to do, because 'oh you have to' - usually by people who fit into the world perfectly well and who never have to think about how things happen outside their bubble (and who usually don't have an artistic bone in their bodies, I  say as an aside). I don't see why I have to be like them, because of their lack of vision, the same as I don't see why I have to keep up with the fucking Jones' because someone who's making money out of it insists that it's must see or amazing... I mean, fuck off, I'll judge for myself.

Using Myers Briggs, which may be nothing more than mumbo jumbo but feels right to me, I'm an INFP and it seems this sort of feeling is pretty common for my 'type' and we often have to resort to writing to try and explain things. As we lead with Introverted Feeling it's hard for us to make ourselves understood at the best of time because everything is so subjective. Also, we're idealistic (something I have in spades) and so the 'real world' annoys me because it seldom lives up to my expectations. By which I don't mean nature or any of the other bits that actually make up the world but the 'reality' humans have constructed. This often seems like a shared hallucination to me, reinforced by authority figures and generally designed to keep other human beings under control.

As I get older I find I'm more willing to embrace my introversion and desire for solitude, especially as so many of the things I see people getting all excited by just seem like repeats, the same old things repackaged and resold. That bothers me a lot of the time, both the way that I react and the thing I'm reacting to. But then, if I like something popular it seems to be by accident and most of the stuff I like is outside the mainstream (and to be honest, I do like that - even though it's probably a perverse feeling of self righteousness or some such rubbish).

but, more and more I want to walk away, to just leave this world behind and live alone. Fuck everything.