A schizoid personality

I am usually not in a good place while surrounded by people, let alone swimming among a crowd, yet after years of practice, I blend in most of the time. It does not show to the naked eye that I go my way a little “off”.

But today I hit rush hours in Paris’ subway, the crowdest city after Tokyo, and had to cross one of the biggest European’s mall the first week of summer bargains (”les soldes” in Paris is a real institution driving even more people in retail stores to hunt for the best bargains of the year). Now, I won’t recommend that to any schizoids or introverts alike… Can’t really get any uglier… A fire evacuation from a big university would have been peachy compared to that one!

I obviously did not readjust my radar to the far heavier concentration of people here in Paris. And today, I felt like 20 years ago when I had to battle with myself to cross a subway station or a crowded street. And like then, I fell back to a really basic comportment: Total and complete shutdown…

The noise, the neon lighting, the fast movement of bodies around me… I was in total sensorial overstimulation, something I had under control for a long while I thought. When that happens, my brain is like an overheating CPU stalled into using all its processing power on unimportant tasks (filtering the “noises”), unable to free up some juice for the higher functions. I then enter in what I call “the zombie state”. Meaning my body is really on auto pilot. I breathe (tough It occurred to me to even skip a few inhales or exhales in the same situation in the old days), but just walking is a hard to impossible task… I could easily stay put in the middle of the crowd, not able to move or speak in some cases, just freakishly stuck in some endless loop.

We are talking living nightmare here, the full fledge concretization of the fearful “lost of control” that is the root of most schizoid personalities (at least mine).

Well today, today… It was bad… I had worse mind you, but it is a low point I had not hit in many years… I was WAY off. I mean I felt it myself. The way I stared, the way I walked, the way I looked at things around me… The overstimulation was gaining, I could feel it, and I could FEAR it. That adrenaline shoot that skydiving did not procure a few weeks ago? Well I got it today… that tells you what I am really scared off!

While I felt the uneasiness come, I recognized it right away. I was in the dead center of a three levels huge mall, and I knew so well to what extreme it could drive me… Adrenaline plus a few basic protocols (always know your emergency exits as soon as you enter any closed area), were here a life saver.

Standing out like I hate it, I managed to get to the far end of the mall. Taking the sub? In the beginning of rush hours, very bad idea in my actual state… Just going outside then? This is Paris La défense… The outside here (”le parvis, l’esplanade”) is the busiest corner of the capital, before “Les champs Elysée”. This is the equivalent to Wall Street at trading closure time… Again not a bright idea. Only two ways I could really go: Pace myself in a toilet booth, or sooth it all in the darkness of a movie theater…

I do like movie theaters; they have been such good friends to me. For some reasons, even crowded, as soon as the lights are off, I feel good. Luckily, it was around 16h00, so nobody was waiting to enter in long lines. I grabbed a ticket at the automatic booth, urged in, and calmed down in a nearly empty theater.

Of course the movie ended just a bit to early to escape the end of rush hours in the subway… So I waited, grabbed a bite, watched another movie, and finally took a late sub around 23h00. Finishing the day with the usual split headache an sensorial overstimulation episode never misses to bring…

Seems I have some heavy lifting to do to reacquaint with people density, mentality and culture (Jack, seriously, bargain week how could you miss that!) here. Well, I was born here after all; I should be able to adjust fairly quickly…

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Well, that’s it! House gone, plane taken, France here I am…
Plane trips are always a breeze for me. I just plug in some earphones right from the start (even if they don’t really deliver any sound) and ignore the first two attempts of my neighbor to start a discussion if he/she is the chatty kind.
Then, between my iPod full of series and music, a book, and some writing, I am actually quite at ease during a flight.
Now, France is another matter… Different culture, I will have to readjust to its reality, I’ll keep the entries flowing as I encounter new challenges.

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What happens when you put a schizoid in a “thrilling” situation?

I honestly don’t know for schizoidS, but I can share with you the recent skydiving experience of your schizoid truly;-)

It really did not started as an experimentation of any kind, I went there open minded, more curious than anything else. But the way things played out, I thought it will be a good “scientific” kind of factual demonstration…

So picture this: 10 people skydiving for the first time. The occasion was given by a coworker, skydiver since 4 years now, and organizing a jump for the 40th birthday of one of his acquaintances. My wife always wanted to tried it, so two weeks ago I decided to put our names on the list.

Last Saturday, 12pm, a bunch of people, some I know from work, some I don’t know at all join for that first experience. Nobody is indifferent. Some are scared, some apprehend it a bit, some are so excited that they can barely stop laughing, others hide behind jokes (but I can feel their apprehension behind that shell of confidence, easily even). Me of course I am not at ease… Nothing to do with jumping though, but 10 people plus their relatives coming to witness the event, that is more than enough to occupy my brain during the wait.

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Well, a week in the big apple, and I must say I was delightly surprised! I could live there! Well, there are a bit too much people still, but I mean, the atmosphere, the architecture, the culture… It’s a lot like Paris with taller buildings…Lots of cafés, in which you are served and not plundered with questions every five minutes (are you ok? Everything fine?, need more this, more that?… - yes you will get your tip, can I eat peacefully now? -). Even the portions of food are smaller than everywhere else in North America, at last a city that seems to understand that quality does not necessarily means quantity…

Peoples look less like sheep too. For example, they will cross a street even with a red pedestrian if no cars are at the horizon (man here in Toronto, they will stay 5 minutes waiting for the green to cross an empty street, I swear the only ones crossing will not be Canadians…)

One awkward thing though; they seem married with their cel phone… in the streets, in the subway, in the park, jogging! Driving, eating!… I mean it’s like they cannot live thirty seconds without talking or being talked to by someone… New Yorkers also seems to know only BLACK, definitively some conformism here, you have to be trendy, and right now, let me tell you BLACK is the trend, I have seen flood of crowds all wearing black, the only tiny bit of color was the Japan tourists melt in the middle…

No but seriously, there is something in the streets of NY, a “je ne sais quoi” that makes it stands from the rest of the country. I really felt some things I had only felt in Paris before. Hard to describe, but I felt home more surely in NY than in downtown Toronto, even if time square is a little bit too much for my schizoid self

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A word on one of my « coworkers ». He is the database administrator at work, in fact the best damn DBA I had the pleasure to work with. He is self taught in this field, changed career several times.

He is also pretty handy with systems (Windows / Linux) not just Databases, does some neat programming too. Hard worker, reliable, efficient, dependable. On a personal side, he is married, traveled quite a bit in Australia, has four and half daughters (two + twins + a newly discovered pre marriage older one…) Two years ago he decided to shape it up a bit, and he is now a marathon man (already 3 marathons done). Redid pretty much everything in his house, got a few websites, etc…

Yes, I like him. He is an “individual”, which be my standards is a pretty high status already. He has also earned my respect both professionally and personally, which is pretty much the top of my pyramid before sleeping with me…

Last year, he came in my office (good times, no shared office then, I was acting director while my boss was working for the ministry of education for a year) and told me he was just diagnosed a mild bipolar with Tourette traits. Of course I already knew he was an unusual guy, this, just like for me, was just putting a label, a name, on his personality.

Bipolars do have some pretty definite med treatments, which he adapted to very well, keeping the strengths while shoving away the bad sides of bipolar (harsh decisions, destructive behaviors and such…). It’s normal, I do believe there is little he could not achieve, he’s “the man” after all (private joke).

See, another proof than extraordinary individuals can’t be “normal” peoples, by definition. Sure he is on the extrovert scale, sure I won’t discuss Kafka or geopolitics with him, sure I won’t hit bars with him either, but none the less, he is one of those that are standing out of the mass (in a good way, not in a mass-murderer clown politician kind of way [not targeting anyone in particular here]).

And if I deal with a particularly hard project with impossible goals and tight schedule, guess who I’ll turn towards to? I’ll choose an extrovert friend over any sheep, anytime!

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No it’s not Amityville, it’s my home… I was not prepared… Four to five visits yesterday and the same the day before…

Now I can deal with the occasional repair guy checking the furnace or the meters, as I am aware long in advance of his coming, and he is usually in one place of the house when I am in another for the duration of his work. But 15 minutes notice to get perfect strangers roaming in the entire premises for half an hour was a shock!
I could not block, I could not think straight, I could not focus, I even think I just panicked at a point (reading emails that I had already read previously)… I am not used to fake or use all my artillery in my own house, I am telling you it felt like I was 20 years back thru time, when I had poor control and was easily overwhelmed by people!
Hart beat up the roof, sweating, hands slightly shaking, cold along the spine… All long forgot symptoms that came rushing back at me for some insane reasons.

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So the other day I come back from work. I am in the car, driving in the right lane, circulation is pretty normal for 5pm.As I cross the 407 (a big interstate), I know the street I am in will soon go from three to two lines. So I speed up a bit, pass a few cars, signal, and inject my car into the middle lane soon to become the right one, plenty of room.A surreal light and sound show take place behind me. A huge black SUV is horning and flashing all the lights is got at me… Since it does not break my calm, I notice the SUV pulling on the left line without signalling and so doing forcing a silver Camry to break pretty hard, while at the same time I am slowing down and stopping at the red light. I already know what is happening…

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