Sometimes You Hear Something...

...so often that it makes you wanna puke.

I first noticed it in fourth grade when I feigned a fainting spell because I couldn't stand the bitch I had as a teacher. I was impish and playful and for some reason she hated that part of me. So she did whatever she could to beat my ass down. So I figured if I fell on the floor I'd get some type of revenge. Little did I know at that young age that they can tell from your BP if you've actually fainted or not. That led to countless meetings with school psychologists asking me all sorts of banal questions about what I wanted to be, if I liked my parents, did I pee in my pants and on and on. For fucking sake, I was what, 8 or 9 years old. How the hell was I supposed to know what I wanted to be. I just hated the fucking witch that was making my life miserable. But that's when I was pegged with the "different" tag. You never get over it. You might circumvent it for a bit, but once it's been planted, your ass is stuck with it and you start believing it and it spirals through the years.

The following years were great. I was the class clown, teachers pet, did well with grades and the like, and was considered "normal". Then I had to leave parochial schools and enter the public school system. Immediately I was "different" again, not for any personality trait, but because I had curly hair. I was ridiculed on a daily basis, even publicly humiliated in classes because of it. I hated that place, and it continued into high school. Back then, before hair dryers, hair was tough to mange. By my senior year they had invented them and I was able to straighten it somewhat, but by then the seed had been planted. I was "different". So I turned hippyfied. I introduced people to dope, and then I was "normal" again. At least in my hippy peer friends eyes. The psyche is not so forgiving. There was always that underlying nagging notion that I would one day again be pegged as "different". Hell, I didn't know what the hell it meant, to be honest. I felt normal. But it don't work that way.

First year of college was uneventful, but I still had that nagging thing in my head, so I went off and joined the Navy, where I finished first in my class in whatever it was I was assigned to. I don't remember. But little did I know that the years of belittlement when you're young lead to personality disorders. And you put a 19 year old with a psyche that's been berated for years into a closed environment, and the new kid on the block, and you have a recipe for disaster. Which is exactly what it was.

Forward a few years and a college degree and some semblance of normalcy and life was good. Met the X, had her friends tell her nice job for the find, and I felt "normal". And I did. Until the divorce. Then I was dubbed as "different" again. By everyone. And it's stayed with me since. Except for the short stint with almost wife #2, It's always been that way.

What I've never figured out is why someone with a "soft" personality, that doesn't provoke anger, that let's people be themselves and encourages it, is labeled as, ya, "different".

Fuck it. It is what it is. So I'll deal with it. But quit putting people in boxes that they can't get out of. You tell people something long enough and they start to believe it. I am considered standoffish at work, which is not true, and arrogant because I happen to be a shy person. It dismays me that my life has been this way, when it is so not the case. Just never had anyone around that said, "hey, your as normal as hell. Let's get a gun and go do some shooting."