People might think it is odd, but sometimes, I don’t know what I’m thinking. I have a flow of thoughts in which many thoughts flow at the same time. Sometimes, I go back and forth between thoughts when a third thought comes into play. It’s like watching TV with two or three picture-in-picture boxes. If someone interrupts those thoughts (and how could they know I’m in that many thoughts?), it all goes away like someone pulling the plug on the TV. It’s like BOOM! Everything just went blank! If I get asked what was I thinking, I might be able to pull one of those TV streams back into focus and tell them, or I might just be blank because I never committed those thoughts to memory. I’m sure it’s just as frustrating for the other person asking me the questions as it was for me not being able to recall what I was thinking.

I can’t not think about something. There is no letting my mind go blank. It doesn’t happen. I can zone out, but I’m always thinking about something, picturing it. I’ve had a stream of six or more concurrent streams of thoughts, sometimes about different topics. This also adds to the “picture-in-picture” analogy in the previous paragraph. When I think about something, I’m picturing it in my head. When someone tells a story, I picture it in my head. A word or phrase might trigger a new thought path which I’m thinking about both the story and the side thought at the same time. I’ve had my actual visual field go blank while I visualize a story. I don’t actually see anything that is in front of me. This can be detrimental when driving, but it happens all the time. I become unaware of my surroundings because I’m focused on the visualization of the story. When doing this, I sometimes get accused of not paying attention to the person. When they interrupt the story to see if I’m paying attention, I’m snapped back to the physical world. If it’s a shock, I can lose what was said just like the TV plug getting pulled.

I don’t know why this happens, but it makes it very difficult for me to communicate in certain scenarios. I can see why people might get frustrated with me. If it doesn’t look like I’m paying attention, it can cause anger in the other person. I’ve been told that I’m not a normal person. I don’t think normally, and I don’t process things normally. I’ve known that for a long time, but I’ve never been able to articulate how. I sure as shit don’t know why. Maybe I’m just wired too differently to ever have productive personal relationships. I don’t really have friends. I might have one or two, but I don’t view things like they do with TV friendships. For me, it is difficult to related to “normal” people.

All of this leads to people assuming I’m thinking a certain way or doing things because of a certain reason. They are almost always wrong. When I try to explain it, I’m looked at like I’m a fucking liar because they cannot understand how I got from one point to another. Often times, my explanations of how I arrived at a conclusion are met with skepticism. I can understand why. If I cannot articulate how I arrived at a conclusion, or I don’t remember how I arrived there, it makes me look like an idiot or a liar. If it’s one of them, it’s “I’m an idiot.” That’s especially true if my conclusions don’t make sense given the surrounding circumstances. They made sense to me at the time, but that doesn’t really mean much if it isn’t close to logical. If enough time has passed (and that’s a relative “enough time” because it can vary), I don’t remember how I got to that conclusion.

I constantly have a stream of, at minimum, two streams of thoughts going on in my consciousness at all times. Typically, there is a dominate thought process, but there is a sub thought process going on as well, at least one sub thought anyways. With my thoughts and observing things around me, I can miss things that are obvious. I cannot remember everything, so I instinctively flush most things from my memory stream, meaning I never commit it to memory. It makes it really had to explain things sometimes. I guess it is a gift and a curse. I need to be more conscious of conversations with people, and I need to make a better effort at focusing on the more important thought. It’s too easy for my thoughts to get hijacked by some random thing like a noise, a trigger word, or a fly.

Fuck… no wonder I’m so mentally exhausted a lot. I can’t control my thought stream. It’s like watching (American) football, soccer, NASCAR, and all of the Avengers movie all at the same time in my head. Sometimes, I envy people who are simple in their thoughts. It sure would make relationships much easier. Hell, it might make life much easier. That’s not reality though, so I’m just going to have to figure this out. It doesn’t help when anxiety takes over, and I have six streams of anxiety filled thoughts rolling through my skull. Fuck… maybe there is no hope for me. Maybe I’m doomed to live a life where people don’t understand me. I don’t know. I just have to keep trying and move on and try again tomorrow