continuing the personal meta begun in the previous post--please skip if bored!

[fufaraw]

I have a non-adversarial view of and relationship with death. As a small child, I bought into the "normal" fear of death as taught and performed by my parents, teachers, and others, to whom I looked for direction. I must have been eight, maybe nine, when I realized it was a performance, one expected of me, and stopped doing that, stopped thinking about it, stopped expecting, simply was still and took a long, personal look at death as a concept and not a threat, a punishment, or a horrible fate.

I mentioned before that life unfiltered has always been too bright, too loud, too immediate for me to be comfortable. I've sought buffers--solitude, music, reading, meditation, introspection--to insulate me from the loudest, brightest, most abrasive parts of life. I've stood in the shadows on the fringes of the bright arena where people were going about making friends, having adventures, buying clothes and exclaiming over each other's new shoes, new car, new house, observing with some interest but feeling no wistful tug to join in, to be one of "them."

Since childhood, the fringes, the shadows, were safer, far more comfortable, and quite intense enough. When forced, by school, by work, to spend significant time in the company of others, or in space where I was forced to interact, I tried to compensate by visualization (safe space, empty space, a sunlit meadow full of nothing more than grass and butterflies), by music, if permitted, that made my coworkers moan in boredom. I wasn't yet able to articulate about the nineteen squirrels in my head that never stopped running, talking, laughing, arguing, all at the same time and each about different subjects with little or no relation to each other.

It wasn't until adulthood and research into ADD, MB personality types, and Aspberger's that things became clearer. But since childhood, I've been holding the world at bay on one hand, and seeking, through visualization, through meditation, and other methods, a source of peace, the cessation of sensory input, even oblivion, on the other. Death hasn't seemed threatening for a very long time. It's been a quiet, present refuge, never actively beckoning*, just always reassuringly there. I have no fear of it.

I do, on the other hand, have a tremendous horror of the process of dying. I hate pain. After some study, I accept that pain has its uses and that some people invite the experience of pain for release of emotional or physical or sexual tension. That applied judiciously, consciously, pain can liberate and exalt some people. I am not one of those people. I also deal poorly with change. My experience has always been, nothing stays the same, and nothing ever really changes for the better. So the transition from life to death does scare me, quite a bit. But once across that threshold, death holds no terror for me. I almost look forward to it, as a reward for persisting. But I made promises, having had honest discussion with nearest and dearest. And I keep my word.

But death doesn't hold the same horror for me that it might for other people. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But it does feel like it makes me less relatable, somehow.


*just to reassure anyone who might be concerned

Comments

[skeletncloset.livejournal.com]

When I was a child and I mean REALLY young, around 6 or 7 at the time I started looking at people and I could SEE them aging and what they would look like decomposing and it occurred to me there was no god and I LIVED IN TERROR until I was 12-ish. Not kidding. I used to cry myself to sleep and when I looked at my mother I would cry and she would ask me what was wrong and I couldn't tell her that I saw her growing older every day and she was going to die. I used to get panic attacks. Years later (I was 26) I was diagnosed bipolar, which is the same thing as manic depressive.

It explained a fucking lot. My brain was a scary place at one point. I guess as I got older I became desensitized to it. But to see decay all around was terrifying.

I think I could have done with a little meditation if I hadn't been such an active child.

I also don't think you're strange. I have friends such as you. Being around people to long is EXHAUSTING. They need their solitude to a high degree. It's why there are extroverts and introverts. I'm an extrovert. I love people. That doesn't mean I have relationships but that's because I have attachment issues. I just don't attach. But I love people. I want to be around my friends or strangers all the time. It gets me out of my head and I love that.

[fufaraw]

Thank goodness there are people like you! Otherwise, we'd all be sitting in our little solitary circles, lost in our heads. I'm so sorry for little you, though, and the terror you lived through. Perception beyond what's considered "normal" can be awful for a child, especially since we're not able to articulate it early on, a lot of the time.

But yes, I love people, I'm fascinated by them, I can study and observe them all day. From over here. Interaction though, as you say, is exhausting. Worth it sometimes, though, for the right people. Even if it takes some time to recover.

[skeletncloset.livejournal.com]

I did. I just didn't want to tell my mother or anyone because I knew they would worry about me.

Yeah, I recover WITH people. That's the difference between you and me. Being by myself with my own brain is exhausting. People charge me up but then I become a runaway generator . . . mania . . . it's awesome. LOL.

But yeah, I tend to be super enthusiastic about everything. I'm a people person. Unfortunately so are my kids. There comes a point where it's just awkward. Especially when my son was going through an "are you my daddy?" stage.

[sylsdarkplace]

This is so interesting to me because Scruffy (Mr. Syl) is bipolar, but he's an introvert, so totally different reaction to parties and such. He's the one you find off somewhere in a hallway or the porch talking to one person. I can be relatively social for a short period of time if I know people, and then, gotta go. 'bye now!

[skeletncloset.livejournal.com]

bipolar works differently for different people. It's just we function on the extreme ends of a mood spectrum and we can't control it. Some people can be completely normal and then swing toward depression and some people are like me that can experience mania and depression. It's the manic side that sets me off. Goal oriented behavior, little to no sleep, reduced appetite, feelings of euphoria . . . agitation, too much energy, talking and writing my ass off, thrillseeking, risk-taking, feelings of invincibility, aggression . . . Haven't had it in a while. i'm on drugs so I'm level headed. I'm within normal bounds of the bell curve now. I'm not gonna burn out like most do. With a manic episode comes a depressive one. Depression is withdrawal. Imagine your brain on drugs, amphetamines specifically except it's all you. No outside source. The moment those neurochemicals wane, depression hits and it's the lethal sort.

[sylsdarkplace]

Yep, I know. Trust me, I KNOW. I just think it's interesting how it manifests differently in extraverts and introverts.

[skeletncloset.livejournal.com]

POOR YOU.

I've been divorced twice. That should tell you something. It's hard to live with someone with the illness. You must be a TOUGH cookie.

[reggie11.livejournal.com]

I have no fear of death whatsoever, it's just a natural progression. I have had religious folk ask me how I could be unafraid when I don't believe in God, but what's there to be scare of? You live until you don't. I think they're far more afraid because they believe in things like Hell or some sort of punishment after they're gone. Although, I'm like you, I certainly don't relish the thought of the process of dying and hope that I'm lucky enough when it finally happens, that I'll go in my sleep.

I'm an introvert and most of my friends are very extroverted social creatures so they think I'm a little weird because I like my solitude. They don't seem to get the difference between alone and lonely. I can spend extended periods alone and be perfectly happy yet be at a party and feel lonely in a large group of people. I live alone and am perfectly happy not to have to share my space with anyone else. I like company but I don't need it like a lot of my friends do.

[fufaraw]

It's one thing I truly love about the internet--you can be social and outgoing with a lot of people, and never leave the safety of your own cave. A board I'm on had face-to-face weekends yearly, for nearly a decade. Planning the second annual, I mentioned in passing I'd probably be hanging out in the stairwell recovering from all the togetherness. As the conversation went on, more and more people said they'd be hanging out in the stairwell with me, until we admitted that there would be more people in the stairwell than in the meeting room we'd booked. A bunch of social introverts, yep. It did turn out great, though, because we all understood whenever somebody had enough and disappeared.

I think you're onto something in your first paragraph. I know my mom was a fervid Christian, and her friends, and friends of mine who were very devout, all had an atavistic, superstitious fear about death and dying. "But you guys are the ones going to heaven! Aren't you eager to get there?"

[reggie11.livejournal.com]

Yep, I'm usually the one at gatherings that needs to disappear on my own for a while. It can get overwhelming otherwise. Not to say I don't like a good party or get together though.

With the death thing, it doesn't really make much sense does it, that religious people who believe in Heaven seem to be the most afraid to die. Almost every athiest I know has no fear of death. I think it's mostly because religion is so fear based to begin with. It preaches wrath, sin, punishment and so forth. Also many people (not all) believe in God because they need to believe there is something more, it's too scary a concept that the life we have is all we get. I find it kind of calming to think that when my life is over that I'll be dispersed into the earth or the atmosphere - I really like that thought. Plus, although I have no desire to die any time soon because I'd like to live as long as possible, the thought of having no pain anymore is kind of appealing. Seventeen years of constant pain is unbelievably exhausting.

I'm not actually an athiest, I'm agnostic. So it may all end up quite the adventure. It may be I'll just blink out of existence, or it may be that there's a whole new level of existence. Either way it doesn't matter, in the former I won't know, and it the latter it makes for a nice surprise ;) All I know is that it won't be fire and brimstone. If people want to find hell they just need to open their eyes and watch the news.

[sylsdarkplace]

I don't exactly fear death, but I have a tenacious will to live even at my most depressed or anguished. Sometimes, I think I'm just stubborn.

I sometimes enjoy socializing with people, but it gives me an awful hangover. If I go to a party, I require almost no interaction with people the next day.

There were few kids in my neighborhood as a child, and I spent a lot of time with just myself as playmate. It's where my storytelling began. I read a lot and made up my own games and stories. I still do. I go to sleep making up stories and often wake up doing so. I need solitude first thing in the morning -- something my husband still can't grasp. When I hear that "solitary" in prison is horrible, I have difficulty grasping why. Being stuck with all those people seems so much worse.

You mention ADD, and MB personality typing -- I've not been tested as far as ADD, but with MB, yep, and there's indications that I'm on the autism spectrum. There's so much that they can understand now that weren't known when we were kids. Understanding myself can help, but it doesn't mean that others make the effort or that outside forces can be controlled. Like you, I have a tendency to turn inward when outside stimuli gets too much. It took me a long time to realize that others perceived that tendency to be aloofness or rudeness.

[fufaraw]

Birds of a similar feather, we are. And you're right, just because we have a diagnosis doesn't mean other people are going to understand, or even respect it.

In those cases, can we shoot them? Oh come on, just a little bit?

I remember being forced to attend family gatherings with my 'rents, and forbidden to bring a book. All I could do was find a corner and try not to be noticed. And manage to smile and nod if someone did try to engage me in conversation. What are you people even talking about? What language are you speaking? I have no basis on which to frame a reply, even if I could force myself to do so. Inhuman torture.

And oh god, yes, don't talk to me in the morning. It's when I write, with that leftover dream energy, before I have to be verbal and deal with the real world. Once I listen, or formulate a reply to you, that energy is irrecoverably gone. I pound out words later on, of course, but that early time is when the story lives.

[sylsdarkplace]

I wish I could shoot them sometimes. My co-workers have zero respect for my space or need for quiet. The good news is that for security reasons, my "cubicle" will be boxed in with a wall and glass. That will cut down on noise and people invading my space, but I dread the days it will take to accomplish that. I nearly went nuts Friday while they hung a door. Maybe I'll take vacation while they do it. Nah, I'm such a control freak, I need to be there to make sure they don' screw things up. *sigh*

Yes, family gatherings were pretty awful for me as well -- even worse, gatherings with in-laws, extended family. Not that I don't like them in ones or twos -- well some of them -- but in large numbers. No.

Morning, right? All these years, and Scruffy still wants to talk to me. I just sneak out of bed and pray he doesn't wake up.