I have withdrawn from the world for the time being. My reclusion is so thoroughly complete that I am barely present even here on the internet. Personal interaction with the human race, for me, has virtually ceased. This is not something that I want to do, only something that I need to, for I intend to remake myself in my own image (bounce that one around your head for a while). When I am in the presence of others, I can barely focus on anything other than my act, the role that I play. Playing this role--that of a normal, social human being--taxes my mental faculties. I cannot hope to plan my life while I'm too busy plotting my way out of every casual conversation that comes my way.

Something happened to me a few weeks ago, and I've been trying my best to comprehend all the ramifications. The basic understanding that I came to is this: there is absolutely nothing inherently wrong with me. All these years I've scoured every available information resource looking for an answer, and the truth was that I simply didn't really need any answer whatsoever. All I needed was to be myself, as strange as that is.

I am not a sociopath, or a psycho. There's no schizoid personality disorder, or borderline personality, or bipolar syndrome. As a matter of fact, the only truly abnormal thing about me is my complete, utter lack of social graces; an inevitable consequence of having isolated myself in the erroneous belief that something was horribly wrong with me in the first place.

After coming to this conclusion, I decided that drastic measures needed to be taken so that I may be who I really am. This entailed a great deal of personal introspection since the narrative of life that I have internalized remains strong, despite what my conscious mind may believe. Not even once in my entire life did I ever feel like anything but a useless burden upon those misfortunate enough to share my presence. I'm not complaining, or anything, this is just the absolute truth; I was treated like a scourge.

There is a word for people like me, "Problem Child." Once you are assigned this designation, you are a pariah. Now everything you think and feel is suspect because you are the one at fault; you have all the issues. Any point you may want to make can never be legitimate because you have a "problem in your brain." There is no trusting a flawed brain since it is bound to perceive the world in an inherently flawed manner.

No-one is genuinely sad; we're all depressed. No-one is genuinely angry about life; we have anger issues. What we think and feel are no longer part of ourselves if they are negative or unpleasant--then they become diseases to be treated. I am not going to fall into that trap. All that I think or feel, good or bad, is a part of me.

Half of my own personality lay dormant for most of my life, buried beneath a haze of pharmaceuticals. My natural skills and tendencies were entirely misconstrued as mental illness, and therefore I became a problem for everyone to fix. One of the primary reasons why I have withdrawn from the world is to take on the stupendous task of re-integrating that other half of my personality. This is the "Dark Side," or so it seems. The other half of me that terrified my parents so much when I was younger.

It is not an evil darkness; it is merely not illuminated. This is the part of me that will fight, and if I prevail it will be because I have embraced this forgotten half. Whenever I shrank from danger, and cowered in fear, I tortured this part of myself. When words I wanted to speak remained unspoken, I cut myself as well as if I had done so with a knife. The bleeding was all psychological, the true personality suffered deep within.

Now that I am myself for the first time, my pathetic, weak body can hardly keep up with my intense motivation. I am tired beyond words. Except for these words. All I do with my life now is read books, and write plans down into an encrypted file. This file contains a series of plans for everything in my life. My mind is so exhausted; it cannot keep pace. I must sleep now, though I do not want to.

One day I will say everything that needs to be said. For now, I prepare for the battle of my life. If I do not succeed, or if I can't reintegrate into the human world, I will most likely die young. This is absolutely do-or-die for me, and I find it absolutely amazing. Never before have my options been so starkly defined. One misstep, one mistake as this stage could send me plummeting to my doom. People think I'm far too intense, but they don't know how serious this all is. To them, it is a game; for me, it is absolutely life and death. I spend hours upon hours going over all this in my head, plotting every move, because if I fail I'm a goner. I cannot wallow in my own isolation like some pathetic Hikikomori; such a lifestyle will surely kill me.

I feel so slow right now. This is probably because I've been training in the freakish art of speed reading. I've always been able to skim over text very rapidly, but now I'm using this ability to determine my absolute top speed of reading comprehension. This morning I read nearly a third of a book in 40 minutes; a personal record. That's about two pages every minute, which each page displaying around 600 or so words--technically within the speed reading threshold (since I suppressed subvocalization). It's actually quite easy to speed read; it's the comprehension that's a bitch. Only if the writing is sparse and very redundant can you ever hope to understand it. Most of the time I'll just read Wikipedia articles like this. This is probably why I come across as a very erudite person; I look everything up first and then digest it. If I go for too long without an encyclopedic binge, I start to feel pretty stupid. I always feel stupid. I wouldn't do crazy shit like this if I didn't.

The technique I'm developing for myself--and it's utterly exhausting--involves writing a little essay about what you've just read every 40 minutes or so while you're reading so as to preserve memory. Most of what I've read in the book seems very familiar to me, and I don't have to go back to understand context. This is an ability that I never knew I had. Now that these buried aspects of my own personality have surfaced I can easily imagine picking up a book and then reading the entire thing in under two hours. I know it's not the most spectacularly fast speed reading method--that's not the point. I'll be sensible enough to cap it off right at my thinking speed. Sometimes I can tell when someone has read something that I've written far too quickly, and frankly it's a little insulting. That's something I won't do to another writer of words.

My body doesn't seem to like this, though. I'm so beaten and my eyes get more bloodshot every day. Tomorrow I'm going to try for the whole book, beginning-to-end, speed read. My head will probably explode.