Critters in My Head

I might have talked about this before, lord knows I’ve thought about it enough times. I don’t remem­ber. This could be nor­mal for­get­ting, unsure­ty of whether I’ve dis­cussed this before, or some­thing sin­is­ter and hid­den. This sort of gives me the willies. Think­ing about it that is. It begins, like so many oth­er things, when I was lit­tle.

Since I’ve always had an over­ac­tive imag­i­na­tion it prob­a­bly isn’t sur­pris­ing that I thought my par­ents were aliens. In fact, even­tu­al­ly I some­times won­dered whether every­one but me was an alien, all dressed in human cos­tumes and play­ing a trick on me. [I nev­er felt that the aliens might be in their nat­ur­al skins and I was in cos­tume] I won­dered if I was an exhib­it in some sort of alien zoo, or whether I was being exper­i­ment­ed on by sim­ply liv­ing my life. I won­dered who my real par­ents were and I missed them with­out know­ing them. Since I was fed and watered and hosed off now and again, I was con­tent to be raised by aliens and usu­al­ly dis­missed the thought from my mind.

I also used to think, espe­cial­ly in church, that every­one, every­where, every­time, could see what I was think­ing. My thoughts appeared above my head in Garfield­esque thought bub­bles. They weren’t just words though, they were live action, lit­tle movies being played in the thought bub­bles for every­one to see. Once I start­ed think­ing about sex, I’m sure my rat­ings picked up dra­mat­i­cal­ly. Espe­cial­ly in church. I was puz­zled as to why I could not see the thoughts of oth­er peo­ple and decid­ed that either they were aliens, and had this abil­i­ty, or were keep­ing my skill at thought-see­ing from man­i­fest­ing itself.

Often­er I thought that I was an espe­cial­ly empow­ered per­son. That peo­ple knew this but pre­tend­ed not to in order that I might not real­ize my poten­tial or get some sort of God com­plex. I was sur­round­ed by a yel­low bright coro­na; I fair­ly glowed and peo­ple who could sense my pow­er were scared of me. I felt that I could lev­i­tate things, walk through sol­id objects, con­jure ele­men­tal forces, speak with ani­mals and bend peo­ple to my will. Or, I could have done those things if I had been trained to tap that poten­tial. I tried to fig­ure it out myself.

I’m sure some psy­chol­o­gist would quite enjoy pick­ing those things apart, the fact that my par­ents were aliens is a symp­tom of my own ear­ly recog­ni­tion of my auton­o­my and the sub­se­quent alien­ation that result­ed in my real­iza­tion that I was not a part of what was clos­est to me. The feel­ing that every­one could read my thoughts is the result of my child­hood anx­i­ety that knowl­edge was being with­held from my thirsty mind. The repressed super­nor­mal pow­ers are obvi­ous­ly a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the devel­op­ing bat­tle between my id or ego or super­ego or what­ev­er.

Per­haps it is even a man­i­fes­ta­tion of an ear­ly Carte­sian para­noia regard­ing the Great Deceiv­er. [That was Descartes, right?] I’m most­ly over that now, I think. I still won­der at it, at times. The aliens least of all, because, by now, I’ve become like enough to aliens that I might as well be one. The oth­ers I’m not sure… The fact that I don’t think about them could either be a sign that I have out­grown such child­ish things, or that all you great deceivers have pret­ty much con­vinced me of my nor­mal­cy. The oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty is that I have crit­ters liv­ing in my head.