Whilst celebrating the birthday of my sister-wife* today, I met a friend of hers, who I immediately connected to. Remember how I talked about sparks? It was like that. Now don’t get too excited—her friend was gay, but I’m just saying, you know when somebody you meet is a kindred spirit.
Anyway, so, not sure how the topic came up, but I was sharing with the table at Vin Rouge that, when I was a kid, I had some variety of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder or something. Maybe a sensory input problem, I didn’t know.
The way it manifested itself was, say my right leg itched. Well, if I scratched it, I had to scratch my left leg in the same place or else I felt unbalanced. If I bumped into a wall with my left elbow, I would turn around and bump my right elbow into it too.
Turns out, Kristen’s friend—the one I want in my posse—is a psychiatrist, so I was all, “Hey, what the hell was wrong with me?”
He explained that, when we’re little, we believe in magic, we believe things that are broken can be made whole again, etc. But as we develop and understand the bounds of reality, the transition can be jarring. The “balancing” actions I took were a way of holding onto the old scenario. If I stretched one arm out, stretching the other would make it as if neither happened.
This was my meager understanding of what he said. It’s totally possible that my paraphrasing is completely wrong.
But it’s interesting to think about, right?
You want to know the best part? One day, when I was probably eleven or twelve, I was like, “Amy, that is some fucked-up shit. You need to cut it out.” I had always known it was weird; I had always felt like I had to hide it. So that day, I just talked myself out of my mental illness.
Sure wish I could do that with the rest of my emotional special needs.
*To clarify, my sister-wife, Kristen, and I are (in our fantasy) both married to Paul, who is (in real life) married to Jeff.