I had a great exchange today with one of my new Tweeps. One post on his blog triggered my interest. “MSP… Do you have it?” was the title of it.
MSP stands for “My Sensory Perception”. It was fascinating to read how somebody I don’t even know can feel and think the same way I do. It’s not the first time I come across someone who sounds so similar to me. I knew I wasn’t the only one after all who felt weird all this time!
I grew up surrounded by people who didn’t understand me. They saw me as a bit too crazy for them, let’s admit it, my vision of life didn’t correspond to theirs. I loved to be alone so I could lose myself in my thoughts, bouncing ideas with my imaginary self, singing loud in the middle of a field, letting the rain fall on my shoulders and laughing at my cat who hated stepping in puddles. I used to run, wearing my sweat pants and my dad’s old shirts that were too big for me, until I reached my little hill, my realm and my sanctuary, and I sat on my throne, my rock of life, my inspiration growing from the grass and the silence surrounding me. I watched cows in the horizon moving at a very slow pace, and clouds forming shapes in the sky, painting faces and animals on this never ending canvas. At night, I would stare at the Moon, wondering if I could touch it one day. I remember being very little when my mum told me: “You know, people can see you from the Moon.” I really thought that it was inhabited, so I waved at them and I even tried to find them with my half brother’s old pair of binoculars.
I sensed the world around me, became conscious of my own breathing, and reflected on the beauty of having five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot. I lied on my bed, eyes wide open, letting the shadows of the night overwhelm me, until I closed them to create new stories in my head. I wrote and let the pen guide me, my imagination taking turns as scary as they were exciting to me.
I learned about love, sex and death through books at first, then I made them my own. The first time I saw two people making love in a movie, I was 11. I got shocked. I was young after all. A little later, I found my half brother’s old Playboys and Penthouses at the bottom of a closet, hidden under a pile of rags. I got repulsed when I opened them. I found all of that sexual exhibition very puzzling and disturbing. A few days later, however, I went back and searched for them, and this time, I looked at them. I observed, studied, examined until my brain got so sick of them, I wanted no more.
A few years later, I read Romeo and Juliet and cried when I reached the end. Looking at a bunch of porn never killed my romantic side. It was like everything else. Eating sushi for the first time, grabbing chop sticks and not knowing what to do with them, and then driving a car, feeling it move as I pressed on the gas, and thought I’d really die when I drove at 2 MPH. Tripping balls and seeing colors I thought existed only in my dreams, feeling the beat of speakers vibrating against my body, making my heart shake so hard, I almost threw up. Wandering in an empty street, hearing steps behind me, clutching my car keys ready to deliver a blow if somebody indeed jumped me. Touching silk, breathing the scent of a flower, eating fried pickles and drinking great wine, listening to the opera, composing my first song, giving my first kiss, making love for the first time…. I learned about loss when my cat disappeared. I mourned like a part of me had died when my marriage ended.
Every new sensation triggers something different in me. I like it or hate it, but I always keep an emotion attached to it, so I can remember it when I write. My life has always been like that. It’s an adventure of sensory perception, everything I can experience and retain, simply because it makes my time on this earth richer. I would feel lost without it, aimless, worthless in a way. What would be my purpose if I didn’t satisfy my constant thirst for exploration?
Some people crossed my path and showed me how little these things mattered to them, and I didn’t understand. I felt excluded, confused, cast away from a logic that seemed illogical to me. Life is not routine. Life is not familiarity. Life is not boring. Their opinion doesn’t matter. I’m happy living this way. At least I know I’m not dead. To me, they are.
The Manicheans 
❤
TY!