Facing reality

However I may look at it, the events of 2005 were very much where much of this whole realization of who I was and where things had began to unravel at a rate of knots came from.

From my early teens (so-called) I had felt pushed in to appearing to be mature not so much in behaviour which was and is still is very much less than but more by taking an interest in adult things that gave people the impression I had that sophistication that when matched by a more preppy look, allowed me to mask the real me.

In a lot of ways I was role playing, actually, pretending to be this urbane font of philosophical and political knowledge to the point of studying subjects around it because it seemed to gave me a place the grown up world could accept to the point I joined their organizations and adapted of sorts to their structures.

In time that would lead me to being directly involved in current affairs, even taking a central role within one organization so while other aspects of my life were not going so well on the face of it this seemed okay.

What started off as a great idea turned very much into a monster very quickly because in all of this, the masking lead me to ignore who I was and the very thing that I was discourage from accepting, that I lacked the one necessary thing to do it: An adult sense of self.

Chunks of what ended up as a severe nervous breakdown were rooted in areas such as being given roles to perform by people while wanting them to be filled and to be seen as an authority of fulfilling them  but without their own involvement. Critical meetings were missed due to too many other events and having no proper cover, not only had they not been attended and from that having lost our say, when I did attend I was left to defend why when we said someone was, nobody did.

The bigger thing in all this was for all that outward sophistication, I lacked the abilities of a adult to cope emotionally in this environment, not having the resilience, I struggled to read agendas with notes and follow meetings and could not relate to the others as adults simply because I wasn't one. I might as well as been a 13 year old in debating society, looking for the adults to oversee it.

It didn't take long before I was on leave because my nerves had gone, I struggled to get through a day even at work without crying and if I did attend a meeting I just froze over like an ice block.

That's when it really hit home about being me.

I AM A CHILD WHO'S AGE IS JUST OLDER BY THE CALENDAR, THAT'S ALL.

This was the point here I had to slowly put away that masked version and learn to live again as the child I am rediscovering play, dressing and acting more like my real younger self, finding out more about others who do similar things.