In a World Full of People

   Normally, being who I am I would never let my fears be known to others. Regardless of what some might say or think it IS a weakness. It’s something that other people might use to manipulate you or hurt you. However, I’m going talk about my fears, my biggest fears at that. I hope that by talking about them I will force myself to confront them, or them to confront me and maybe help myself take a step or two past them.

 

Here goes. . .

 

   A1, Number uno, BIGGEST fears: Rejection and Loneliness. I’ll try to keep this semi-brief. If you're reading this I know you must be interested but at the same time you weren’t looking to read a book about my life, lol. Rejection by itself is not really a big deal to me. I have a tough skin about that. Rejection of my true self is what scares me to death. I said I have a tough skin about rejection. Well, that skin is just that I choose not to be myself. It’s sounds strange that somebody can NEVER be himself. However its true, I suppose I started being that way as a kid. I always had a sort of gawkiness about me. I like Star Trek, Star Wars, I like to play pretend (alone, LOL), I would go in the bathroom when my mother wasn’t home take 10 toilet paper tubes stack them up in the tube and light them on fire for NO reason, sometimes I would go in the bathroom and just make faces at myself to see how I look when I make faces (I still do that I must admit). I was that kids who would walk into a group of other kids with those conversations that go like “You know when you’re doing _____ and this happens?” then everyone else says “Ohhh yeahhh, I do that TOO” but when I would add my comment  “you know when you do ____ and _____ happens” everyone would just stop and look like “No. I never do that.” Then I felt stupid. My mother never made me feel like I should be more “normal” or do things that the other kids did just because they were doing them and I should “fit in” but over time I started to notice that I was different and had a hard time making friends. I’m an only child so friends were kind of important. I didn’t want to spend all my time alone. Its funny because as a child and even now I can only deal with people for a particular amount of time (not even a LONG time, lol, like a few hours. A whole day is PUSHING it). Nonetheless, I valued friendship and acceptance. So with that said, I learned what people liked, what people wanted in friends, and what kind of things were “popular” “cool” and “normal.” So I kept my personal interest and true likes and hobbies to myself. When I was outside I sort of became my “public me” the person that was likeable and appeasing to others and made me “normal” and “cool” and eventually once I mastered it “popular.”

 

   People often tell me that that I have “an answer for everything”  “That I’m a smooth talker” “I have a way with words” “or I’m “interesting” I’ve been called “an observer” “Observant” and “watchful.” I always take what people say with a grain of salt, however, comments like those DO ring true. Its no coincidence that someone who wants to fit in so bad and avoid rejection would be a good listener, be able to read between the lines or make acute observations about people or groups. If what you want is to be of interest to people than you need to shut up and see and hear what people are interested in, lol! As far as having an “answer for everything” which is something I hear ALL the time. Whenever a moment occurs when people feel the need to say that is when I “slip.” I mentioned before I have built this sort of “public me” not even purposefully or even consciously (although I am conscious of it), but he’s there regardless. And sometimes the “real me” slips thought a little and if you have been talking to the “public me” for a little and then there are some inconsistencies it’s like “huh.” So at those moments I have to kind of patchwork the public me up in mid conversation. The things is, at this point in my life I have been, I guess for a lack of wanting to sugar coat it, “faking it” for so long it’s just innate that when I see people starting to see the real me I get scared about it and start talking over him or around him. I get funny and joke and all those things because I know that if you get to look at the real me two things might happen 1) it’s like, “WTF, who the hell is this” and 2) You might not like it. I can deal with one, but to be honest I don’t think I can deal with two. I mean naturally this “Public me” is not perfect and some people don’t like me. But I can brush that off by simply saying “fuck them, they didn’t know the real me anyway.” And, you know what? THAT WORKS, I have never felt like I really had to deal with TRUE rejection except once in 8^th grade when the FIRST girl I every really liked and I mean as close as you can come to real LOVE, in the 8^th grade at least, rejected me and I was really being myself (who knows maybe that’s what started this whole deal). But yeah, the only issue with this is that as an adult, I really don’t know how to introduce who I REALLY am to anyone. I have been this way, with this duality of personality for so long that it’s just become part of me.

 

   I suppose with the whole rejection thing its kind of like waiting for a bus that doesn’t seem to be coming. Once you start waiting it just getting harder and harder to leave until you become more DEDITCATED to catching the bus than to getting where you’re going. You start thinking about how long you’ve been waiting, about how as SOON as you leave the bus stop you are going to see the bus pull right past you, how you refuse to miss this bus cause you just spent 35mins waiting!! And you totally loose track that the bus is only a means to get where you’re going. I suppose it’s the same for me in some ways. I want people to just be cool with that which I am normally, quarks and all so I build this “bus” to get people to the real me. I figured I’d bring them in on the “public me” and drop them off at the “real me”. But I been waiting so long on showing them the real me that I start to think “damn, if I show them the real me will they even see it as being genuine or fake because they only know me as nothing but who I’ve been.” But that’s not who I am. . . . . . . . I’m going to let you read that over and catch up, I’ll wait. . . . . . . . . . . Ok, so there that is.

 

   As far as being lonely. I suppose the connection is as obvious as it appears. I just don’t want to be alone in life. I don’t just mean friends though. I want that unconditional connection that you get from your brothers and sisters (although I don’t have any) or your mother, or for some, their husbands and wives. I guess in my attempt to thwart loneliness I have created this persona of an ultra likable person to avoid rejection and being left alone.

 

   Somebody said something to me a little while ago that rang SO true to me it was scary. To be honest it made me retreat from them because it was as if she saw me. All my mistakes, flaws, quarks, shortcomings, lies, secrets, fears, insecurities and all. It was like when she said it she was talking about ME! It was so specific to my life and who I am that I thought there is no way this is just some shit she heard and wanted to mention. This was her telling me I SEE YOU. I see the real you and it scared me because I wasn’t ready for that yet. We were talking about the double standards about men and women and how women do things and they are judged and how men aren’t judged by the same standards. Then we moved on to how when time goes on and people eventually get to the point in their lives when they want to get married and have families and all that and the tables turn a little. Where women once were judged on what they were DOING it is now men who are judged on what they HAVE DONE. I can never remember the exact quote but to paraphrase it was something like; will the woman that you love except you and all the things you’ve done in the past. So its like saying yeah she might like who you are now or who she sees in front of her but when you two really get to know her and she sees all the mistakes you’ve made and the baggage (emotional or otherwise) that you carry will she be able to accept THAT too. That totally just compounded my fear by validating it. I was at a point where I was trying to convince myself that “hey, maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m the only one thinking about this too hard and nobody else even cares.” You know that place where you try to well up some courage to over come something. You gotta talk yourself into it, lol.

 

   I think that to date that is the most accurate way that I can think of to sum up what my biggest fears are. Just being accepted for not just who I am now but for who I am, have been and can possibly be in the future, unconditionally. I know I have the capacity to be like that but I know that it’s only facilitated by knowing that others feel the same way. I refuse to be taken advantage of. Put myself on the line and have people shit on me when I know that I wouldn’t do that to them. . .

 

   Ok, I’m going to just stop here because I have to go to work, lol. But hopefully you didn’t get the lazy eye trying to read all this and maybe I will come to some conclusion later and it this will have been a step to that conclusion. In the mean time I guess I’m just stuck “Alone in a world full of people. . .”

 

 

pEacE