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I have always suspected that I was different, but I seldom ventured to think that there might be something wrong with me. To further muddle the issue, I’ve been an artist since before I can remember. I’ve joked that my mother swallowed a pencil when she was carrying me in the womb, and I got hold of it. I said there were probably some interesting etchings on the lining of her uterus, though my little sister denied seeing any, and the sonogram was a relatively new invention.  Artists can be eccentric, and I’ve been living under the protection of that umbrella all my life. But could there have been something more insidious going on under there? Something less axiomatic than “all artists are weird.” Something (dread the word) neurological?

Even though I may have known that there was something different about me, I’ve never been sure what the norm is. And really, how could I? Unless I could crawl into someone else’s skin for awhile, there’s no way I could realize how many things most people take for granted, simply don’t exist for me. In fact, most of the time I’ve taken it for granted that they don’t exist for anyone. But sometimes, it is quite perplexing; like there’s this club I don’t belong to. At times I’ve been jealous not to be like everyone else, and at other times I’ve thought of myself as superior. But no matter my perspective, be it high or low, I have always felt like I was one of the uninitiated. An outsider?  Perhaps. But is there more to it than that?