Keeping Up Appearances
By and large, I’m a pretty confident person. I give my opinions freely online, talk easily to strangers, argue passionately at the drop of a hat, and wear increasingly ridiculous hats in public without a trace of embarrassment. Even so, I wouldn’t classify myself as an extrovert. Quite often, there are times when I shrink in on myself; when speaking requires more energy than I can muster, and when interacting even with friends and family is utterly draining. For every day when arguments on the internet either bounce off my emotional armour or leave me feeling fired up and invigorated, there’s another where the simplest, most innocuous comments leave me feeling devastated and wrung out, as though all the failings of humanity have dropped on my head at once.
I’m not bipolar, nor am I depressed. I’m not an extrovert, but I’m not an introvert, either. It’s not even really a case of having two different personalities. As best I can tell, it’s rather a sort of fluctuating repression: I have such a good poker face that it fools even me, and am so well-practised at pretending strength or ambivalence in the face of conflict that sometimes, it’s not even a pretence - but invariably, there comes a point when I can’t do it any more, and then I either get visibly emotional or become paralysed by sadness. And then, whether minutes, hours or days later, I snap out of it again, rueful at my own indulgent behaviour but otherwise no worse off for wear.
Being as how I inhabit myself, this pattern is fairly obvious to me: I know my own insecurities and foibles, I can generally tell when I’m at a low ebb (although that isn’t always sufficient to help me move on from it), and on those comparatively rare occasions when I do snap in outwardly identifiable ways, I tend to calm down quickly. What’s harder to remember, though, and what continues to blindside me, is how wholly dissonant my moods can appear from the outside.
Because even though I’m regularly upset by things, I don’t tend to talk about it. Unless I can put a comedic gloss on what’s bothering me, I generally keep quiet - partly because I don’t want to whine on the internet, but mostly because I seemingly have a deep-seated aversion to appearing weak. I don’t know why or when it started; only that the prospect of being pitied, soothed with platitudes or otherwise treated with kid gloves sets my hair on end. The thought of having to deal with other people’s trite or unhelpful reactions to my problems is the single biggest motivating factor in keeping them to myself - so when I finally do get upset, it tends to be in response to more than just the catalyst event; but because all those other stresses have been totally invisible to pretty much everyone else, I come off as being aggressive and hypersensitive rather than simply upset.
The result of all this is that, in my moments of greatest vulnerability, I’m frequently told that I’m at my most intimidating, which observation is then seen as confirmation of my confidence rather than, as it really is, a naked admission of its limitations. If I’m upset, then, I usually end up apologising for having shown it, because once the moment’s passed, there’s a good chance I’ve startled someone else in the process. And honestly, I don’t know what to do about that, or even if there’s anything that should or could be done; I was really just wanting to lay it all out, and wondering if anyone else has a similar problem.
egginyourbeer liked this
emblemisit reblogged this from fozmeadows and added:
Yes. This is pretty much exactly me.
libations-of-blood-and-wine reblogged this from fozmeadows and added:
Well this is familiar to me.
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astrvyed reblogged this from fozmeadows and added:
Couldn’t have said it any better.
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