The mental anguish that I experience as a child may not seem to have impacted me so much to anyone who sees me now. To me it was real and constant cos the one thing you can't escape from are your thoughts.
I considered myself to be a deep and very analytical thinker and I was always questioning what the nature of reality was.
I was obsessed with knowing the eternal truth that was underlying the changing material world. I believed that I had experienced it as I had an enduring memory of a vast void being connected to me personally at the back of my head and I would often and easily slip in to a day dream like trance in which I would experience no thought at all.
When I came out of that state it would cause my thinking over the deep questions to seem even more troublesome to the point of giving me headaches. I would long for the relaxation and peace of the trance but those experiences came on spontaneously and was never under my conscious control, though I was always very conscious during the experience.
These happenings were so real and I was sure something profound was going on but what were the specifics and the mechanics of that state was something that I couldn't penetrate with my analytical mind and to think on such things were mental gymnastics that caused me mental turmoil.