and now for something completely different
Part of the fun of being a repressively compartmentalised person is that it takes me fucking aeons to identify fairly basic patterns in my own behaviour, because all the clues get shoved in different boxes and then viciously misfiled. Which is why, having finally realised that this is what I’ve been doing my whole life, I’m trying to make an effort to document my shitty coping mechanisms, because it’s much harder for me to pretend them away if they’re actually written down.
So: a good 90% of the time, I function – and I use the word ironically, because the practice I’m describing here is demonstrably dysfunctional – on the assumption that everyone I know is genuinely sick of me; that I am annoying, unwanted, rude, boring and just generally a pain in the ass who can’t take a fucking hint. And yet I still initiate interactions with friends online and in person, because I’m also (mostly) an extrovert who craves validation, even though doing so produces a pretty constant anxiety that whoever it is I’m talking to would rather I go away; that I’m being intrusive and selfish for even trying.
Donning my amateur self-psych hat – which is to say, opening the personality compartment that allows me to view myself at a flat remove – I’ve got a pretty good idea as to why I’m like this. Once upon a time (she said, using fairytale language to further distance herself from her own narrative and lampshading the choice with meta commentary, because Emotional Distance), there was an enthusiastically social but contextually weird kid-slash-teen whose loneliness lead her to be fiercely literal in her interpretation of social cues. Specifically: this girl was so hungry for company that even when her instincts suggested that the other person or people were done hanging out, she couldn’t make herself leave until or unless she was expressly told to go. Her awareness of this dissonance made her anxious about her enthusiasm and prone to overcompensating, exaggerating the behaviour she suspected other people found annoying in the subconscious hope that they’d set clear boundaries as to when she was – and wasn’t – wanted. Instead, her friends would quietly tolerate her until they couldn’t anymore, and then she’d be pushed out forever. Couple this with the fact that the things she most wanted to talk about were often considered boring or weird by others, including family, and the girl, who somehow made and kept a few good friends throughout this period, learned that the only safe way to socialise was to assume that the majority of people would always be sick of her, even if they never said so openly, and that maybe she’d inexplicably win a little praise amidst the rejection.
There’s other relevant data, of course, but in essence, my extroversion works on a jerry-rigged balance of self-hatred and resignation, wherein my acceptance of my inability to please or be liked by others allows me to act, in most respects, however I want, because regardless of my behaviour, I myself am fundamentally loathsome. I hold this truth to be self-evident in one breath, and in the next, I duckrabbit myself into the ridiculous hope that I might be seen and known and accepted for who I am; a hope which resides in a different, smaller compartment of self, and which I can put away when necessary, which is most of the time, because the sheer implausibility of it does nothing but make me sad.
I have a mantra for the act, a sort of spoken ritual that’s now a good fifteen years old. I take myself away from other people, and I say the words, and I say them again, as many times as necessary to stop the rage or panic or tears, and I put my heart back in its box. And then I go back to where the people are, and I smile, and if anyone on Earth has ever noticed that change in me, they’ve never breathed a word.
I am, withal, a kind of broken thing. I am trying to be less broken, but it’s a slow and difficult business, and I can’t always make myself try. But this, my writing this down, is an attempt at it, or part of one. Or maybe it’s self-sabotage; I honestly don’t know. But I’m trying.
I’m trying.
I’m trying.
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alessariel liked this happysmileyginger reblogged this from fozmeadows and added:
You have taken my thoughts and articulated them in a way that I have never been able to. This is EXACTLY how I have felt...
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skyboneharper said: Stuff like this is HARD. Thanks for writing about it.
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oceaxe-ifdawn said: I’m proud of you as well, though I don’t know you. I feel as though I do, because you’ve just described me and my attitude towards myself, as well as how I deal with it. Thank you for writing this.
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killapunk said:
I’m so proud of you, Foz. fozmeadows posted this