Eighth Dimension: #66 Colours

Remove all ads!

Had a sad little realisation the other night, I've noticed that colours don't seem so bright anymore. I remember my chlidhood spending hours in gardens and looking at everything wide-eyed, taking in every mark and detail I could see. I admired every flower, turned over every rock and ran across every lawn, everything was brightly coloured, fresh and new.

So what changed? I used to write poetry and stories for hours at a time with crisp description and sheer volumes of text with colloquial ease. Perhaps it is just the winter, but I can no longer just admire the scenery with an innate calm anymore, I look outside and feel closed in, cut off from all I used to interact with. I have grown jaded and any semblence of innocent admiration has been replaced with a coarse examination of my surroundings.

Only recently have I started to feel comfortable with where I am and who I am with, yet I still can't summon up the ability to relax into easier times. I still watch every move I make, every social encounter with such care and curtailing myself with a precision akin to the most biting of remarks or the analysis of a confident psychiatrist.

I miss the days where I was struck by lackadaisical creativity and thoughtful energy that the very air seemed to be my playground. I was fond of employing lesser known literary techniques and weaving symbolism into the smallest of notes and tales, even into the most formal writings I produced always had an air of fancy about them, almost a bounce to the writing. Yet instead of thinking in freedom and opportunity I have inverted to thinking of limitations and boundaries that I sometimes ponder what I have lost about myself.

Perhaps it was a sudden realisation as a child that I was no longer free. The constant jibes and instruction pushed me forever into watching what I said or did, from correcting a teachers' mistakes to voicing unusual opinions such as on the maltreatment of trees in the school grounds. I started losing my physical freedom around the age of seven, but can't help but feel my intellectual freedom started being nipped at around the same time. I was visiting the hospital regularly both for physical ailments and a psychologist who would prod at my thoughts and mannerisms like an intriguing yet ultimately unappetising side-dish on an otherwise flawless main course. Once diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome it simply got worse. Not only would I be going to hospitals every month in a vain attempt to get me to understand how and why I'm different, but they arranged 'help' to come to schools to tell me how I was supposed to act and think.

Contrary to what some might expect, I was hardly a problem child, I would sit and read for hours upon hours. I was told to stop, normal children went outside to play games and sports. I had to give up sports because of my health, I was told to stay inside and read while the other children were sent out and not allowed to come in and talk to me. I was told to stop using long words and putting too much effort into work, because the other children would taunt me for being clever. I was told to focus on expressing my ideas on practical matters, as I would need help with those instead. I even lost my singing voice. I have been whittled away over the years by sets upon sets of contradictory advice and orders, horrified by looking back and seeing how much I've really lost. I can (grudgingly) handle the loss of physical ability and denial of things that once I enjoyed doing (dance, sport, even walks in the forest) but realising I can no longer see the beauty I once saw and can no longer voice myself in my truest manner stings a hell of a lot more.

 

You still seem to write very eloquently and descriptively, if that's any consolation.

I find the notion that 'sensitive' people (sorry if that's a bland generalization) feel the pangs of loss-of-innocence and other related trauma more sharply kind of compelling. I suspect that most people experience what you describe (not all of it obviously, but some of it, to some degree) at some point in their lives, yet many may not really suffer particularly harshly from it.

If I may offer a suggestion: use those feelings like you would have used the colorful ones. Write a whole volume of descriptive poetry about it, or stories or essays or whatever suits you. The 'dark' stuff can be rather inspiring it its own way (and no, you don't automatically have to be considered 'emo' to do that, I don't think). If nothing else, it may make you feel better to verbalize it all in a comprehensive sense, and you'll have something to look back on as your formal response to the whole experience. That way, while you may indeed have lost something, you'll have gained something as well.

(btw, I just now read this blog entry, hence the timely response.)