I am Manas. I am 33 years old, born in Athens, Georgia, United States. Son of Richard Winfield, a philosophy professor, and Sujata Gupta Winfield, an immigration lawyer. I am a middle child, with a sister 3 years older (Kalindi), and a brother 3.5 years younger (Rasik). I come from a privileged background. I never suffered from hunger growing up, and have never lacked anything materially that I would need. As a child, I was very shy, and had low self-esteem. I grew up feeling I was ugly, and even when family members or family friends would complement me as adorable or handsome, I did not believe them. As a child, I was told I was gifted and put into the advanced classes at school. On standardized tests we took as children, I was told I was in the 99th percentile based on test scores. This made me feel that I was expected to succeed in life, and I think teachers may have even said this to me, suggesting I would make a good living or at other times, take on leadership positions. I excelled in studies, as far as grades would suggest, and before dropping out of my high school, I was 3rd in my class. However, studies always came easy to me, though I put in full effort in any homework, essay, or exam assignment, I did not seem to need to study as much as others to get the high grades that I got. For this reason, for a long time I felt I had a poor work ethic, as I felt I succeeded by doing the bare minimum in terms of hours spent or effort given in studies. As I was growing up, I felt a sense of otherness, or feeling like I didn't belong anywhere. This was probably related to my mixed, half-White American, half-Indian identity, and feeling like I wasn't exactly similar to my peers either in America or my family in India. As I became an adolescent in America, I didn’t talk much about India as most people didn't seem to interested in learning about it, and I take it most people assumed I was White American, as my appearance allows me to pass as. My feelings of otherness or alienation, I think, were also related to a feeling that I never had a strong, consistent friend group throughout my childhood. Even to this day, I feel I struggle to maintain friendships and wonder how so many people I felt connected to and shared good times with have become so distant in the time since I've spoken to them. I used to feel I was always the one contacting my friends first, and now I have stopped doing that as much with a lot of friends not contacting me first either. I have always been curious, though that is something I think we all share as humans, but I have never been shy to ask questions. I was never afraid to look stupid by asking the wrong question, and in school and college, I would often ask detailed questions of the teachers. I am learning that there is a lot I can learn by sitting back and observing first, and also that many people don't necessarily enjoy to feel like they are being interrogated in a conversation, or mined for information/knowledge. Growing up, I had a difficult relationship with my parents. As a small child, I remember telling my dad I wanted to kill him and throwing temper tantrums that would lead to me crying so much I would start coughing. As an adolescent and young adult, I continued to have a terrible temper, though only reserved for the people closest to me. I feel I have for a long time lived a double identity, with people who know me more casually or friends sometimes saying they could never imagine me angry, as my demeanor at default with most people is polite, quiet, kind, funny, soft-spoken, and calm. Growing up in school I was often a class clown, finding joy in making other people life. In middle school and high school, I was also a bully in making fun of people, often for their vulnerabilities, in a way that was funny for me and maybe others around but not for that person. As I grew older, I began to feel guilty for having been this way and have made an effort to avoid speaking negatively about anyone, whether to their face or behind their back. Guilt is an emotion I have felt very strongly throughout my life, perhaps stemming from the incidents with my Amma where she would bang her head out of frustration at my antics, which neither of to this day seem to remember. In high school I had my first romantic relationship, which only lasted 2 weeks. I told her I loved her and soon after she dumped me with no explanation, which seemed to bring me into a state of depression until the beginnings of my first manic episode in October 2006, when I woke up one day suddenly feeling at peace and happy. Around that time is when I first started considering spirituality, having been raised with no religious identity or any religious community. I took a comparative religions class in high school and started seriously imagining or "trying on" the doctrines of each major world religion we learned about as well as becoming interested by meditation and other forms of altered states of consciousness. My sense of having become enlightened that October developed into a manic episode, conflict with my parents, psychosis, disorganized behavior, and a trip to the mental hospital in January 2007 as I was found naked with the wooden slats of my parents' bed around my head and neck as I was screeching like a penguin. The recognition that I was mentally ill and not enlightened was a slow and painful process, and came along with a dullness to my personality and facial expressions that concerned my mother, who was not sure whether it was my personality, the effects of the illness, the dosage of my medicines, etc. Throughout my life I have had this double or even multifaceted aspect to myself, of being shy and talkative, reserved and flamboyant, quiet and the center of attention, jokester and serious inquirer all in one. As well as, the aspects of myself which I struggle with the most, my violent behavior during episodes and on several occasions when I had become angry when I was sane- and the intense guilt that came along with it. My desire to be good and the recognition that I have a dark side. My struggles with self-control of my anger during my childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, and my desire to be loved. The hurt I have caused other people, and my desire to help others, which perhaps manifested in my going into social work and becoming a therapist. My feelings of inferiority and low self-esteem, living side by side a secret sense of superiority (the identity of being someone labeled "highly intelligent"), wanting to hide any sense of being better than anyone while also wanting to combat the negativity I have felt towards myself. Though I was very shy during childhood and quiet in high school and college, even though with friends I could be very funny and excitable, as I've gotten older I've become more of an extrovert. However, as I've had more frequent mental health episodes (about yearly now), my expressiveness seems to dull during the aftermath of mania and psychosis and ramp back up until the next episode. I feel I have matured in not being as impulsive as I used to, and my job as a therapist may have played a big role in me being more cautious with what I say, as I think about how it may affect the other person before I speak. I write poetry, play 4 musical instruments (piano, drums, guitar, and tabla), enjoy drawing, and have in the last year or two begun to express myself through singing and dancing. However, I feel a mental block come on me sometimes and still struggle to perform music, sing, and dance in front of other people. I have challenged myself by performing my poetry on stage in the last few years but still get stage fright and end up shaking with my voice wavering on occasion. I have become much more confident as a speaker, again in large part due to my job as a therapist and facilitator of group counseling sessions, but still struggle to feel confident when it comes to entering into romantic relationships. I shift between thinking myself desirable (mostly based on having been given compliments over the years about my appearance, which has reversed my thoughts of being ugly that I had as a child), and unwanted as I feel awkward when approaching women I feel attracted to. Though, when I think about my three previous serious relationships, they all developed easily and naturally and took their own time (meaning that I may be impatient when it comes to expecting romance to develop right away). I find myself falling for women I find attractive fairly easily and scattering my attention on many women at once who I feel something for. I was told once by a young woman I met at a bar that I reminded her of someone she knew who is on the autism spectrum, in that I did not notice when women were into me. This does seem to be an ability I lack- sensing and knowing when and when not a woman is interested in me. I also struggle to make romantic advances, preferring instead to befriend or talk casually, not flirtatiously, while building a relationship with a woman I desire. I struggle to say the right thing or make the first move to let someone I like know that I am interested, though maybe they are already aware from my non-verbal communication. I have spent a lot of time fleshing out what I see as my weaknesses on this page, but I do acknowledge I have grown a lot over the years, while making plenty of mistakes along the way. I do not fear social situations, I do not experience acute anxiety like I once did, I tend not to wallow in sadness and regret as much as I used to, I developed a better work ethic with each passing year working, I have developed a more nuanced perspective of my parents and accepted them for their flaws more than before, I have gotten slightly better at letting go (as my separation from my wife vs. first serious girlfriend shows), and I have become more mature in social situations (no longer impulsively jumping in with off-color or shocking jokes, no longer desiring to make people feel uncomfortable, becoming patient in group settings, and honoring romantic bonds already in place more respectfully). Intellectually, I have developed slowly but surely by reading spiritual texts from Hinduism, Buddhism, and being open to learning about Western religions more than I ever was growing up. Though I don't read as regularly as I want, or consistently spend my time productively, I have made peace with the situations I am in in life and don't feel the constant pressure and regret of not being productive like I used to. This may mean that I have become completely aimless, but emotionally I tend to feel in control. One criticism I have heard from my most serious partners is that I am a thinker but not a doer, or even that "all I am is pretty words." I still struggle with this one, as I get lost in thought, words, aspirations, listening, observing, without taking the action that practical life requires. If there is anything I would like to change about myself, it is this.
