Sometimes I feel trapped. Not physically, just in my mind. I have a million words all jostling for space and not a single place to deposit any of them. Sometimes they just don't come. You read things that people have written and think how easily that could have been you. You listen to the manic typing of someone inspired and almost explode with the desire to swap places with them for five minutes - just to let some of it out. It's often occurred to me that my brain is too intelligent for me. Now, that's not me saying I'm clever because, as people go, I'm pretty average. Parts of my brain, unfortunately, do not realise this. It wants to know things. It sees a sad person and wants to know why; sees a cloud in the sky and wants to know how; hears a noise from outside and wants to know where. It wants to learn every single thing about the world - the things known and especially the ones unknown. It wants me to be Darwin and Austen and Hawking and Marx and Descartes and Kant and Twain and Mandela and Wittgenstein. God, it wants me to be Wittgenstein. Most of the time, I just want to be a Ninja Turtle. Or perhaps that woman in the Special K adverts who gets chased by a man dressed as a chocolate muffin. (Not because I like Special K. Because I want to eat a man-sized chocolate muffin.)
I don't know when it started. I don't think it ever did. My mum is fond of informing me that I've been "one of those people" since I could speak. Before that, too, just she had no idea that I wasn't crying for milk but for the fact that The Very Hungry Caterpillar wasn't Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus. Or possibly because the cat was sitting on my head again. I sound pompous. I'm pretty sure I'm not pompous. I build forts out of sheets and eat 200g bags of crisps in one sitting (with help, I hasten to add). I sit in the middle of the street to talk to cats who very obviously are not going to even think about humouring me. I swear a lot, usually at grown men in shorts tottering around a muddy bit of grass attempting to kick a spherical shaped object in the correct direction. And failing. Sometimes I eat McDonald's. Terrible, isn't it?
I've digressed, haven't I? Yes, I have always been - and shall never stop being - one of those desperately annoying people who wants to know everything. My favourite as a child was "Why am I me?". My mum would sit and explain it all, with the help of Mummy Laid An Egg (the sole reason I would ever consider having children) and I'd stare disdainfully at her, put a hand on my chubby hip and say "Yes, but why am I me?" I don't think at the time either of us understood the question but I've spent the past 19-years pondering it and I think I finally have my finger on the button. I want to know why everything is like this. I'm not talking politically (I'd rather eat cotton wool balls coated in nail varnish than talk for a long time about politics) or environmentally (that's man's fault, that is. No questions need be asked). Honestly, I'm not really that fussed who created the Earth (Ok, I am. I think it was Jafar from Aladdin but thus far have not been able to provide any evidence to back up my case). As I'm typing this, I am arguing with myself. "NO!" inner-Sophie cries. "You don't want to know why, you want to know how!" Outer-Sophie scoffs and reminds inner-Sophie that they really are the same thing. Inner-Sophie stomps her foot. "What about what? What's the tiniest tiniest bit of an atom made of? What's the meaning of life? What's the time and can I go to bed yet?" Inner and Outer stare at each other for a second, wondering if perhaps they've found what's being searched for. Then Outer-Sophie lashes out and sends a pot of paint flying (I don't know why. Dramatic effect. Nothing like splashes of red to enhance the drama of a scene.) "We've forgotten WHERE! Where does the end of everything start? Because it must start. If it doesn't, then how can the start of everything ever have existed?" Inner-Sophie shrugs, distracted by the rivers of paint trickling their way towards her. She leaps into them, splashes Outer-Sophie, and dances away. leaving a trail of scarlet footprints in her wake. Outer-Sophie wipes a frustrated tear from her eye, grabs a mop and starts to clean, all thought of the universe and the nature of being scrubbed away with the red.
No, the 19-years of ponder haven't helped a single bit. Give it 19 more and my brain will have left me for another woman.
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