What is it like being Bibiel today?

I haven’t written a journal-prompt based post in a few months, so I thought I’d do one today. Since we haven’t had a question of the day in a while either, I chose a short and simple prompt. You may feel free to treat it as a question of the day and answer it in the comments. You don’t have to read the whole post if you’d rather just answer the question, it might get a bit rambly and perhaps not the most interesting/relatable/digestible. 

 

The following prompt comes from Hannah Braime’s book of journalling prompts – The Year of You: 

 

What is it like being you today? 

 

As someone fascinated by people, mostly on an individual rather than a collective level as the so-called “humanity”, I find this an intriguing question, and one that I often feel tempted to ask others, not just “today” but in general. It’s fascinating to think about what it might be like to be someone else, and how different or similar that might be to our own experience. And we’ll never really know for sure! Nor will we ever be able to describe it well to others what it’s like to be us because we don’t know what it’s like being anyone else. Consequently we have no idea what exactly is the difference between being e.g. me Bibiel vs a random Jack Smith. I guess that is why some people say that we’re all lonely and always will be. Each of us is just basically imprisoned in their own brain. And it’s not like I have a problem with that or seriously want it to be different. I think I’d much rather be perpetually lonely and have my brain privacy than if we had one, collective brain or something. That would be so boring. 

 

I guess I find it all the more interesting because the longer I live, the more starkly I realise how much of an alien I actually am. So many experiences I’ve had, or have regularly, that I used to think are normal and must be everyone’s reality, are gradually turning out not to be. Go figure. Yet at the same time, strangely enough, I’m still a human nonetheless, so some of my experiences are bound to be similar to those of my fellow human beings. That can be really confusing sometimes, to figure out which ones may be and which may not, and, when speaking with other people, not sound either like an absolute freak who’s just arrived in the human world from Bibielland, or, on the other hand, a snowflake who thinks her whole existence is somehow inherently exceptional. So what better way to find some balance than learn about what it’s like to be other people. Whenever I’m forced to deal with some peopling, especially if it’s longer than my brain can handle and in a larger group of people, think an extended family gathering or sitting at the hairdresser’s or something, something I really enjoy doing to kill the time and keep my brain occupied is analysing people. I like to observe their external behaviours and what they’re saying, and imagine how that compares to what it’s like for them on the inside. Perhaps all they’re doing on the outside is some sort of mask or game and they’re really very different? What if they’re just as bored sitting here as I am, but just happen to be better at faking it so put on their best show and always act like the life of the party and seem to be enjoying themselves very much. And this guy who’s sitting at the end of the table and I’d suspect he’s mentally asleep because he hardly says anything and when he does it doesn’t sound very intelligent – maybe he’s got a Brainworld too, like I do, and has no qualms getting wholly engrossed in it publicly and zoning out? Or maybe he stayed up late because he was doing something actually interesting so that’s why now he is irresistibly sleepy? Or maybe his conscience was keeping him awake because he did something atrocious but no one knows? That constantly whimpering baby, what if she’s feeling very unwell but her mum doesn’t realise? What if this baby will develop a trauma over that but will not have a conscious memory of it once she grows up so won’t be able to get over it?… Usually the stories I tell myself about people around me are more interesting/dramatic than their subjects are in reality, but I find the diversity in people’s characters and internal experiences fascinating nonetheless, even if I find them completely unrelatable on a more personal level. 

 

But anyway, I was supposed to tell you what it’s like being Bibiel, not go into some freaky pseudosociological discourses. Most normal people would probably just see this question as a more engaging way of asking “How are you?” (Which is totally fine btw), but I guess my subconscious doesn’t like it when things are too simple. So let me try to answer it again. 

 

Well, currently, it feels very decent being Bibiel! I seriously cannot complain. Some of you might already know or suspect why, right? The Peak!… The faza peak! As I wrote earlier this month, this past February I got a faza on Griff Lynch. Plus, my faza on Gwilym still hasn’t faded! I so hope it won’t anytime soon! So things have been very interesting, I had no idea I could have two dominant fazas at once, and who would have thought that I’d get yet another faza on someone who is Welsh, though it’s definitely helping my Welsh skills. I felt ambivalent about this faza at first because it all happened in a very weird way and, with my faza on Gwil still doing very well, I didn’t feel like I needed a new one at all. And I still have some reasons to feel a bit apprehensive about the whole thing. But at the same time it’s been a really fun ride, the faza in general, and the peak, as those initial peaks at the beginning of a new major faza are always bliss. I love how creative, energised and happy this Griff peak is making me feel. Though at the same time it’s a relatively gentle peak, when you compare it to the one I had on Cornelis ten years ago. Since this has started in February, I feel like for the last week or so it’s been very slowly going down, but it’s still a very definite peak and I suppose it’ll be a while until this faza stops peaking and becomes more of a steady thing. I wish I could just always have a peak, but I realise I’m exceptionally lucky that I have something like peaks at all. 

 

Consequently, these days Bibielz are usually soaring somewhere just above the baseline mood-wise (for those who don’t know I have dysthymia/persistent depressive disorder aka a kind of depression that is milder but sticks to your brain with a hell of a lot more determination than major depressive disorder, so my baseline is lower than most) and have more energy and brainergy than usual, and lots of interesting and fun ideas. I’ve had an odd AVPD “flare-up” here and there during this peak but they haven’t been very long or spectacular. This peak, as peaks tend to do, has turned my whole sleep-wake cycle upside down, which is something quite normal for me in general that anything major going on will make my sleep cycle and need for sleep shift, my circadian clock just easily goes out of kilter since I have no light perception so my brain finds it hard to remember what time zone I actually live in. For a week or so I basically slept 2-3 hours a night, but since I have so much energy, I didn’t even really feel it. I’m quite glad though that my sleep appears to be gradually going back to a more normal schedule and amount. 

 

Currently, Misha is here with me which I’m really happy about, as the last few weeks he’d been spending very little time in my room and hid a lot, but recently, for whatever reason, he’s very sleepy during the day and basically sleeps through almost all days in my bed, and then comes back for the night unusually early for his standards. Actually, perhaps that’s why my sleep is going back to normal now, because when Misha comes here at night, he won’t go to bed if I won’t go with him, so he basically has been playing daddy with me and telling me when it’s bedtime, and I have no real choice but to obey, haha. So today it’s very Mishful to be Bibiel. 

 

Other than that though, there hasn’t been a whole lot going on in the Bibiel world. Thus, as you can see, dear reader, my existence lately has been rather monothematic, which might not be all that exciting to read about. 😀 

 

So how about you, lovely people? What is it like to be you today? Or any other day, for that matter? How would you describe it? How’s your life been lately? And, do you also enjoy imagining what it must be like being other people, or would you rather focus on the actually important things in life? Do you ever feel like it’s very different being you than what it must feel like for others to be themselves? 🙂