Little Worlds for Little Me

One intense image to another. One moment in time to another. I could see the little world in each thing in the world. Day by day, I went through life like this. I'd get so taken in by one detail, I'd forget everything else. I had a fascination to touch everything. My grandmother on my dad's side often would call my name in a tone that meant "Stop touching!" This is how I spent my days as a child, slowly guided through the "normal world" by others. I was apt to get confused at "the real world", and preferred to stay in my own area of comfort. I didn't always understand what was being taught in school and instead preferred my own version. I got lots of "creative" compliments from teachers, when subjects like math just went over my head. As I got into the teen years, I got into early music and would listen to it for hours upon hours, my favorite being Mozart, but I quickly developed a taste for early music like Allegri's Miserere

Now, I can still get lost in these worlds, thinking so hard about them that I am not paying attention to the outside world at all- just like I did as a kid. It can be art or music, but it can also just be a piece of moss on a tree, or the way the table is set. In fact, each one of these "scenes" gives me a different emotion. Sometime they are friendly emotions but sometimes they are not and I have to redirect myself. This was not so easy as a child. Redirecting my thoughts almost never happened then. I also had times when I just could not understand what an adult was trying to say to me. This got me into trouble sometimes. Then I would feel confused and hurt. I did things differently than the other kids. For example, in Kindergarten, we made treats out of ice cream cones and frosting. I had taken a bite out of mine when nobody else had. I felt so bad that I didn't know we weren't supposed to eat them yet and that my friends somehow did know this!

What of this is mania and what is depression? I wrote in a previous entry about early psychosis. It doesn't go back this far because I can't think of any psychoses I had as a child. If I did have them, they were so real that I didn't recognize them as such. However, I did have an episode at age 4. My dad says it was brought on by some medication for my bladder (infection?) but the name and dose are long forgotten. At any rate, I woke up one night in the middle of the night hallucinating. I had a "sparkle finger" that I could make patterns with in the air. My dad and I had fun with this until "the trip went bad", as they say. I saw monsters! "Shoot them with your sparkle finger!" my dad suggested. This went on for hours- heck! all night maybe. Whether the drugs caused this or they got my pre-bipolar (pre-diagnosis) brain to do this, or it was a coincidence I don't know. It was a hallucination so I will count it here. I do not recall every being depressed during my childhood (pre-puberty).

At 10 I got a 110 camera and enjoyed taking the little worlds I'd see and making them into film form. Not the best camera ever and I was only 10, but it was the start of something I still love today.

At lunch one day in about first grade, I went to the lunchroom only to find none of my classmates there. In fact, nobody was there! I was very confused. I went outside to see if they'd gone to recess, but couldn't find them there either. When I came back in, they were at the table eating away!

In 2nd grade, I was placed in an advanced reading group. We had a plastic bubble that you attached a fan to to "blow it up" and then we'd all go inside and read. My problem was that I had no idea what they were going on about. Their language was foreign and so was the reading material. I still don't understand how I got in that group!

It wasn't until I was 16 or so that my grandmother bought me a tape of King's College Choir that I really got into choral music. Its still a favorite of mine to this day. I sometimes wonder why I never sang as a child. I played the violin and the piano, but not very well. My voice was low but not extremely so as a child. (I have recordings.) My mom says I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket back then. Our family always had music playing, but mostly instrumental as my dad played the violin. That and whatever was popular at the time- James Taylor or the like.

I still see the little worlds. I still get lost in music. I still hallucinate. Sometimes I have times when the sound is all individuals in a restaurant for example instead of "background din" and that is really hard to deal with as its overwhelming.

This was just a small glimps into little worlds for little me.