Every brain is different. While the general structure is the same, and the blueprints are mostly identical from person to person, the actual composition of the brain varies from person to person. Part of it is due to chemical changes during gestation, or as we age. It can be caused by traumas that are physical, mental, and emotional. It is influenced by environment, both the one in which it lives, and the one that raises it to maturity.
The thought processes that make up our brains vary just as wildly. What may seem obvious to some is obfuscated by confusion by others. It isn’t an indicator of intelligence, though we do like our little number generators, it isn’t an indicator of anything, really, other than that one brain is most certainly different from another.
That means that we all have our quirks, our eccentricities, thoughts that don’t connect to the mainstream. Such differences can often create stress because we want to be liked, we want to be considered a part of the group. We want to be seen as “normal.”
There are times when I feel I do not deserve to eat.
It’s an old one, a thought I’ve had since I was a child. It wasn’t taught to me at all, but it is what I think from time to time. I imagine part of it comes from growing up without food as often as we did. Being poor in the U.S. may not be as bad as being poor in other parts of the world, but going hungry is still going hungry, and what’s worse is that you’re going hungry in a land of plenty, where other people have no such impediment to getting the nutrition they need.
Have you ever watched television, and there’s a villain on a TV show who is sitting at some table and talking with their henchmen about who they’re going to terrorize next? Sometimes they’re eating something, and when I see scenes like that, I wonder to myself “do they ever think they don’t deserve to eat?”
The thing is, that thought process only applies to me. I could never, on my worst day, consign someone else to hunger of any kind. The idea that food could or should be withheld from someone else is nothing short of barbaric to my mind.
There are times when I believe I do not deserve love.
This one has been with me since I was a child, as well. I loved hugging people, as a child. I loved being close to people. Friends, family, total strangers, it did not matter to me. I loved everyone. Thinking I was undeserving of love didn’t come from my parents, either. They raised me with the the knowledge that they cared about me very much.
If I had to guess on the origins of that one, I’d have to think that somewhere around 5 years of age, my brain was rewired somewhat by a number of bad experiences. I won’t go into them here, but suffice to say the effects of those bad experiences linger to this day, and still affect me in ways both known and unknown to me.
Perhaps another aspect of it is that I am a very lonely person. I am mentally and emotionally lonely. Physically, I have people who live with me, but I am still lonely in that regard as well. It is possible that over time my brain has become used to the notion that I’m lonely because I deserve to be, and it’s entirely possible. Hell, my last date was 16 years ago, and it was uneventful in every regard.
I expect to die young.
This may be tied directly to my health problems, as well as my depression. My parents are certainly not the type to predict gloom about themselves, or myself. In fact, my mother in particular believes that thinking about it too much kind of speeds it toward us, so she avoids such thoughts.
Me, I think about it constantly. I believe that one of these days, soon, I will die, and that my death will be this ignominious end to a dull, dreary existence. Whether that will be so or not, I can’t rightly say, but I am rather convinced of it. I didn’t really have these thoughts, though, until my early 20s, but once they took hold, they anchored themselves in there, and to this day I expect to keel over any day. The follow-up thought is that maybe people will care, or perhaps I’ll be tossed in a hole and life will go on.
I do know that life will go on regardless of whether or not I’m there to experience it. If I could apply any kind of comfort to this, I will say something that I believe is positive: The universe is vast. It is, in a sense, timeless, and I am a part of it. I am a sentient part of the universe that was made manifest, and when I die, I will return to that universe. It isn’t much, but it’s all I have.
Isn’t it funny how our brains perceive everything around us? How it deals with our inner turmoils? We all handle it differently, even if we nod our heads in unison while others are around.