“I want people like me to know that they aren’t alone. And I want everyone else to know that I’m a natural human variant. I want to take off the mask, but not until I change the world to make it a safer place for me.”

tore through this in a single sitting and it was a very rewarding experience to be walked through thomas’s internal world. this memoir is constructed through anecdotes of her personal life, classic research and quotes & excerpts from literature. most notable is the reason she chose to identify as a “sociopath” over the diagnosis of “psychopath” that she initially received; the negative connotation of the word “psycho” that, 10 years later, still persists in collective memory. when i read the line “i may be disordered, but i am not crazy”, i already knew i was going to commit to this book. a lot of people fail to realise that rationality is another one of the many socially constructed arbitrary and fluid concepts that are shaped by experience and disposition. essentially, people with disorders/mental illnesses have their own internal logic that does not adhere to conventions enforced by the majority. thomas presents her condition as a simple variation, a deviation from the mean on a spectrum of human personality.

there’s a lot to be said about this book but i think it’s a good primer for those looking to understand this condition, though it requires you to be very, very open-minded and committed to it. it is unflinchingly and incisively honest, in a way that questions a lot of the fundamentals we are socialised into from a young age. i’d take it with a grain of salt because the research cited may be relevant, though it is quite dated but it is nice to hear from someone who has introspected and interpreted it through her lived experiences.