I try so hard just to be myself
but I keep on fading away.
–Elvis Costello/Pay It Back
This above all: to thine own self be true
–William Shakespeare/Hamlet
It seems like it’s a fairly universal fact of being a teenager and young adult: we all do a lot of playacting when we’re young. Some of it is healthy role playing. A lot of it is a less healthy cover up. Pretending we’re someone more likeable. Less objectionable in some way. I had a few very good friends as a teenager, people I was always myself with, but it was always much harder to be around other people. It was a lot of mental work to figure out who they expected me to be. So I’d end up essentially being nothing. Nobody.
There was a fairly long period where I really don’t think I was anyone. I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t really trying to be anyone else. I just…I wasn’t. I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t unhappy. I didn’t think I was, anyway. It wasn’t until much later that I figured out that I was numb. Numb to pretty much everything. I was living with someone who didn’t really know me and who I was convinced would not like me if he did. This is not a great basis for a marriage. I got so tired of pretending to be the person I thought he would like that I just stopped having a personality at all. Being conventional is hard. Hearing “but that’s weird” all the time is hard. So I just sort of faded away.
I think I’ve mentioned that I find as I get older that my long held belief that if I act like myself no one will like me has turned out to be completely wrong. And it’s not that people just tolerate me when I am myself. People actually like me more. A lot more. Some of them even tell me that. It makes me smile.
I hope I never get completely used to it.
At this point it’s still a really pleasant surprise every time I hear it.
(Trying really hard not to go all Sally Field here…..)
Now that I’ve figured out how to be myself, more or less, I just need to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.
Scratch that–I am not going to grow up.
Do I still need to figure out what I want to be if I know who I am?
Great, my logic just got stuck in a loop.
I better overanalyze the situation a little more, but this picture tells my story pretty well.
Will keep you all posted.
