What Makes a Dragon Tick?

How much of that question is answered by my initial opinion - that I can't conceive of why anyone would actually care, let alone be interested in reading an essay on the subject thereof? But this writing is by request, and I intend to make it reasonably public - how much more of the question does that answer?

In truth, that seems to sum everything up. I haven't much self-esteem, I run depressed, and I crave attention. I could end this essay here - but I'm afraid you're stuck for a longer haul than that!

In writing any essay that includes significant components of why I'm such a wreck, I find myself reluctant to include any details of salient, relevant trauma and unfortunate happenstance that life has brought me. I know that most people have had worse to deal with, and have turned out better; I can't help but feel that anyone could look at my history as a feeble attempt to justify myself. But these points are relevant to what makes me tick, and so I present them with, I hope, the shared understanding that I relate them as explanations, not justifications or excuses.

I was born in Salt Lake City, with both paternal and maternal grandparents and an aunt and uncle in the immediate vicinity. I suppose everyone feels disconnected from their younger selves, unable to properly reconcile their attitudes, beliefs, and existence as a child with the person they are now. Such a notion is eminently reasonable; after all, full cognitive skills and the most complex mental functions such as abstract thought don't fully develop until adolescence. (Of course, in many people, certain cognitive functions such as postconventional morality don't ever fully develop… but that's a whole other issue.) Despite this, I think the divide between myself and my youth is more dramatic than most - I cannot possibly conceive of how I was who I was! For, you see, I was a terror - lacking in self-control and consideration for others, I caused immense trouble in school over the course of the three-and-a-half years I spent in the system. Detentions, in-school suspensions, out-of-school suspensions, and had I caused one more incident - or rather, had the other incidents I caused been reported - I would have been expelled.

I recall one incident clearly, for rather selfish reasons. Recess, of course, would not be held outside in the rain, and who would want it to be? How events led up to the situation I don't recall, but it culminated in a loud argument between the vice-principal and myself over whether or not it was raining. Just another incident which earned me a disciplinary action, so why do I remember it so clearly? Because I was right, dammit - it was raining, and no sooner did the administration send us out than it called us right back in.

I think I may have pinpointed the foundation of my cynicism.

Still, I must have graduated - or at least so one might judge, given that I have enough literacy to write pretentiously and with hoity-toity grammatical construction - so what turned me around and brought me to the straight, narrow, stuffily conventional path I walk? A move, one completed with but a fraction of the family I knew. My parents divorced; I still don't know the reasons why precisely. My mother moved, taking my sister and myself with me, first to my grandfather's (my grandmother having succumbed to cancer a year or two prior), and then across the country to Maryland, just outside the capitol. All at once I found myself bereft of friends and family, in a totally alien environment, unsure and rather lost. Certainly a traumatic experience, and one I intend to return to, but what is its relevance in this situation? Simply this: for whatever reason, the move catalyzed an internal change. I don't understand how, or why, but I think after the move I received a total of two detentions in the course of my remaining education. The destructive drive had gone, and when other kids picked on me, or even ganged up en masse to beat the crap out of me, I really had no drive to fight back, or strike back, or… anything. As to why, or what precisely this means… I leave the reader to draw their own conclusions in this instance, as by some miracle I have none of my own. Don't think this condition will last, though. You're not that lucky.

Intelligence. I find my thoughts drifting, unfocused, but I know I want to say something on this point. The question is, what?

Well, first of all… Am I intelligent? What is intelligence? Numerically, I'm classified as a genius or close thereto - an IQ of 144 or 151 depending on what sources one chooses to cite. But that's nothing, or maybe I've just been lucky, because I've always been fortunate to associate with people I consider my intellectual equals, if not superiors. I have a collection of facts and raw ideas at my disposal - I can actually explain Hawking radiation, for example, and I know about the Zimmerman Telegram - but that's just memory. I comprehend quickly, I test well. But whatever quality is intelligence, at least as I understand it, I lack. I see it in other people, I respect it, I admire it, but I don't think I possess it at all. I don't even know what precisely it is. Maybe this concept of intelligence is simply something I've constructed as a means of self-deprecation, but then perhaps I would be able to define it better.

More likely, I simply emphasize the things I can't do, learn, or accomplish over the things I can. Friendship, for example; who's smarter, the person with a college degree and no friends, or the high school graduate with a dozen? More accurately, who's happier, and what's the purpose of intelligence if it doesn't lead to some measure of happiness? Then, I remember all too well the glaring errors, mistakes, and follies I've committed - again and again and bloody again! I only wish I knew how other people feel, remember, relive their mistakes, because I'd be so reassured if I knew those other people felt the same way I do. My memories of my failures are oppressive, intrusive, and seemingly eternal.

The other day, I was coming home from work in a rather cheerful mood. The drive home had been easy, the day unusually low on stress, and my personal life in less gruesome shape than usual. I pulled up the hill, parked, and headed up the path into the house - and WHAM! A memory slaps me upside the head, of going to the wrong house at the wrong time to pick someone up, and feeling like a total fool, embarrassed and idiotic. Farewell good cheer, goodbye happiness, welcome back self-loathing and depression. How do I fight something like that, particularly when I have no particular memories of great success or competence on my own part with which to counteract the mental images?

Whatever intelligence I have, it seems to do little for me, at least in terms of happiness. Ignorance is bliss, and I'm not ignorant. I can't blindly believe everything I read or see; I can't accept that the government or any member thereof are right or wrong simply by virtue of title or existence. I can't not think, I can't take things on faith. I don't have any particular set of spiritual beliefs to fall back on. I've written entire other essays on my inability to shut my brain up!

Beyond intelligence, I have one other capacity that I consider extraordinary to the point of supernatural Talent: empathy. The emotions of others are like open books to me, as easily sensed as a black dot on a white field is seen. Most people seem to think of empathy as a rational function, the capability to understand that someone is upset or happy or sad. It isn't. Consider, for example, vision. Strictly speaking vision is simply the process of photosensitive receptors in the eyes reacting to radiation within a specific range of wavelengths. The brain is what processes the information into a comprehensive image, and the brain together with the weight of society and accepted linguistic constructs classifies objects, colors, the world. Consider that what an English speaker considers a bed is das Bett to one fluent in German, and what is kawaii! to my friends is only cute to me, but it's all the same object or quality. Red is simply a term used to describe or define a particular wavelength of light. Empathy is much the same. The actual feelings I get from other people are sensations, nothing more, and it is the responsibility of my mind to translate these sensations into descriptions, words that describe feelings. But the range of emotion any one person can experience is vast, often confused or mixed, and language is often inadequate to the task of describing it.

Still, doubt as people may when I can't put words to feelings, I do have this capability, to a rather disturbing level. I can read the emotions of people across a continent, provided I'm in a conversation with them, even an electronic one. I have absolutely no capability to defend myself from the assault of other people's emotions. I can't be happy when other people are miserable, I can't help but hurt when other people hurt. Sometimes the frustration drives me crazy.

I take one thing back, however; I do have two defenses, two ways of blocking out the emotions of other people. Rage and pain. When my anger or my hurt gets to a certain level, all other considerations fade away. Worse still, this condition can feed off other people, fuel itself through their anger, their pain. If you've ever been in a serious fight with me, if you ever wanted to know why I act the way I do, then this is your answer, or at least a large part of it. I'm feeding off your pain, your hurt, your anger. Those feelings become mine, add onto what I'm feeling, escalate my retaliations, until they achieve a level where my ability to rationally think is compromised and I've lost that vital empathic connection I had to you, my ability to understand you on an emotional level.

But I can't give the quality up, I wouldn't want to. I've had the quality fail once that I can recall. A friend of mine, particularly capable at shielding, slammed herself closed in a burst of anger, and my empathy simply couldn't reach her any more. The feeling was terrifying, as if she'd fallen off the face of the earth, like going blind. Rationally I knew she was angry, but I couldn't feel it, couldn't comprehend it on a fundamental level. I couldn't live my life like that. What scares me is that most people do. I wonder how other people can be cruel, spiteful, malicious, so selfish - so utterly self-centered, unable to comprehend the effects of their actions on others. Only when I realized I had a capacity for empathy did I realize that other people just don't feel the way I do. They're blind compared to me.

Or maybe I just see too much.

I don't know who my first girlfriend was. The first girl with whom I had a serious "thing" going refused to let me use the term. So I use the term "sort-of ex-girlfriend" to describe her. There's a story here, of course. So I'll tell it, and build on it, and maybe once I'm done with all this, the illustrious reader will comprehend my abandonment issues.

The story begins, as do all of my grasps at relationships or feeble flailings related thereto, online. In the course of my online roleplaying I'd struck up a friendship with a girl - just a year older than me, in much the same position I was in life, dealing with emotional issues and the normal difficulties of adolescence. We'd talked, we had a reasonably good rapport, but there was nothing really going there.
Then, out of the blue, my paternal grandmother died. I really loved my grandmother; she was a grand old lady, classic grandma, who baked cookies and spoiled me and set up giant Transformers bases made out of exercise machines and poker chips with me. I hadn't seen her since the summer. I don't remember my last words to her, the last things we did together, the last time I saw her. No one saw this coming. I don't know how to express how I felt then. Certainly I didn't cry, didn't really express any emotion externally. I couldn't talk to anyone in my family about it, my friends weren't the sort you relate this sort of thing to. I felt hollow inside, rather numb. And my friend, desperate to cheer me up and help me through, spun a fantasy for me, of us getting married, and living in an old Victorian house out in the country, curled up in a hammock, watching the stars.

"So… what does this mean for us?" I asked her the next day.

"I don't know," she said.

But gradually, we drifted closer. We never spoke of love, or being girlfriend/boyfriend. To this day I don't know for sure if I loved her or not. Still, we were a pair - not as much as any two people can be when apart like that, I've come to realize that now! - but certainly together. There were other guys in the picture for her, one in particular who pursued her, but she never seemed particularly interested in him except for the fact that he was close and that meant she could go out and have something of a social life. We built on our fantasy, planned our Victorian house, planned to own a small bookstore in a quiet town somewhere, and got through life somehow.

Then, as a birthday present to me, my mother flew her out to meet me. She dumped me a week later.

I… can't entirely express my feelings on all this, even now. In retrospect… our time together was sweet, romantic, if I gloss over the difficulties. I understand now what purpose she served in my life; she got me through high school, moved me into position where I could meet the woman I do believe is right for me, and inadvertently and indirectly caused me to meet the best friends a dragon could have. Still, I know I will never have closure. I know I will never know why she left me, what failing of mine drove her off. I will never, never, never know why I wasn't good enough.

I really don't ponder the question much these days. Still, I know it has become a part of me.

What have I lost in my life, as a quick summation? Two grandmothers (dead), two grandfathers (move across country), one father (move, haven't heard from him in two years), one entire life (divorce and move). Any number of friends I felt so very close to, of course, when high school ended and we all moved on to college. I know I really should have expected that one, but… I had expected better from people I thought I knew, people who did make the effort to communicate, at first, but gradually grew bored with me and slowly vanished. Any number of potential and thought-they-were friends in college, who simply walked away when they grew tired of me. Nothing unusual! I know any number of people have suffered worse. But this isn't about them, it's about me!

So what am I left with, these days? One close friend in physical proximity, who I see occasionally. One close friend, formerly in physical proximity, now cross-continent, who hasn't forgotten me - a fact I'm thankful for daily. One girlfriend, 555 miles away. Other acquaintances of infrequent contact and varying degrees of closeness.

I'm an open person, a trusting person. My desire is to have close friends; on meeting someone, I'll generally make an attempt to see how close they'll let me get, over the span of the time I know them, and get that close. Consequently, when people turn around and leave - particularly after months or years of association, of friendship, it's like a vein opening. Another scar carved across my soul, another mark that will never heal. Until the logical result: myself, now. Unable to make friends, unable to keep them. Forever an aggravation and an annoyance, alternately getting too close and pushing away in frustrating proportion and mercurially varying.

People have a perception of me as needing a great deal of attention. I confess this is a logical conclusion, as I'm usually seeking attention one way or another. But this perception isn't entirely valid.

Reference the friends section of this essay! I only have one physically close friend, who I see infrequently. Most of my time is spent sitting at my computer, online, but even then I rarely have people to talk to or things to do with them. I'm twenty-two and I literally have no life. I don't even work with people who I can have any sort of rapport with; in fact, after coming off a day of work I desperately crave any sort of intellectual stimulation.

So do I ask for attention frequently? Absolutely. Because I don't get all that much. If a man asks for water, and gets some, he is satisfied. If he gets none, then he must continue to seek out water! If I got more attention, I'd be in much better position to function without it for longer periods. Periods do indeed occur in which I simply want to sit around, play video games, and let the rest of life go on without my active presence. Of course in all fairness, even at my best I do need a reasonable amount of attention, but hardly the level which people seem to think I need.

Ultimately, I don't honestly know if I've addressed, truly, what makes me tick. Certainly I've sparred with the topic valiantly, but in the end I may be overwhelmed. The hardest person to know is yourself, goes the saying, and while what I know of psychology may grant me a better understanding of myself than most people could claim, even so I don't know much about who I am, what I am.

Ultimately this remains a work in progress, of course. I imagine I'll think up any number of things to add into this mess of musings. But I can sum myself up, at least as it regards you: I'm just a lonely guy, loyal to a fault till I'm turned on, afraid to trust but needing to be trusted. Just… treat me well, and I'll be eternal for you.