well, i've read some books and i've grown quite brave

I am eighteen years old, and I am still a child. Life has bruised and battered me quite a bit, I have somehow sprouted a personality completely parallel to what would be expected of me; the circumstances in which I was raised should have turned me into a trembling introvert rocking incessantly back and forth inside of a padded room. No, I’ve molded my own mind. I’ve created my own life. I thrive in dysfunctional situations. I do not like to live in a clean space; I need chaos to function. I do not clean my room until I have to move things around with my feet in order to get to my bed. I drink coffee to cure headaches, and smoke cigarettes to cure a bad cough. I’m colorblind. Light hurts my eyes. I look at things in a way that causes me great discomfort; analyzing every detail of my surroundings until my inner monologue breaches the confines of my mind and nonsense words start to escape my mouth. I do not trust people who wear very dark clothing, because subconsciously, I believe that they are from the future and they know something detrimental but they just aren’t spitting it out. I cannot focus on one task for longer than five minutes before my mind starts to wander. Every day I give someone a compliment, because I think that everyone is fighting some kind of battle in their lives and maybe telling them that their hair is pretty or that I like their shoes might make them feel a little bit better, at least for a moment. I am very socially inept; when I am in a group of more than five people I become convinced that one of them hates me and is thinking terrible things about me. I cannot hold eye contact for very long; it makes me feel vulnerable. I do not know how to handle arguments simply because I think that they are ridiculous, and feeling angry makes my stomach hurt. I get caught up in irrelevant things; I stare, I analyze, I people watch. I hear dull music in my head when I daydream; usually it is the Beatles for some reason. I sleep too much during the day, and time has almost no meaning to me now. I never know what day it is, and I never schedule or plan anything. I remain oblivious to very important obligations and responsibilities. I start projects and never finish them. I am not put together. I do not have myself figured out. I know the basics and I roll with that. I am learning every day. I am crazy. And I do not mean a cute/humorous/endearing kind of crazy. I mean that I am actually, insane. My mind does not work the way that it should; my thoughts are all over the place. When I start to lose my mind I have been known to do things such as eat toothpaste sandwiches, take on characteristics of people I read about in books, accidently break water pipes in my house, play dress up at ridiculous hours of the night/morning, create fires with my journals, stay awake for days researching a completely random/useless topic until I know everything there is to know about it. Okay, so maybe it is kind of humorous. But in no way endearing, or “cute.” My tics and tweaks and nervous habits my shaking hands my stuttering and fumbling and faltering; I am far from graceful. I am eighteen years old, and I am still a child. Sensitive eyes of an infant. Curiosity of a youngster. I am learning every day.