But Which One Am I?

Similar to my last post, this topic I wanna speak about I feel as if only a handful of people will understand EXACTLY where I’m coming from. And to those of you that do understand, I hope that this serves as a reminder:
You’re not alone.

But what is it that I want to speak about? And it’s this:

Some of us feel that we wear too many faces.

And what do I mean by that? Now, the first thing that might come to mind is me suggesting that some of us are a bit too fake; that we mask ourselves with faces that don’t belong to us. We hide, trick, and manipulate people with the many the different facades we put on to get what we want.

No. That’s not what I’m referring to here, though there are people out there like that.

Actually I’m referring to this idea, or rather, this feeling that I have in that I have many different faces, and maybe different “personalities” is a better word, for different social situations.

But okay, that doesn’t seem too unusual. We all have that; it’s called Social Awareness. Yet, still, I’m not referring to that either.

It’s more complex than that, and I think only those who know what I mean will really get what I’m trying to say. 

What I’m trying to point out is that some of us have thoughts, feelings, expressions, entire personalities we let few, or even no people at all ever see. And when we go out with our “friends”, our “coworkers”, our “family”, we put on the face we know they’re used to seeing.

“Best not rock the boat,” we tell ourselves.

And what I mean by that is they’ve known you to be one way, and to suddenly change, to act in a way that is asynchronous to what their prior expectations tell them how you should behave, it would only cause questions.

So best just act in the way you always have. So you do.

My question first would be, is that you being fake? Are you being ungenuine when you take this path? And that’s a tough one to answer, and I don’t know if there’s an obvious answer. But one thing is undeniable:

It certainly feels like being fake.

It’s like this…whenever I have to “restrain” myself from acting in a way that is not the “norm”, at least in the sense that it’s not what the group expects me to act in, then well, it does feel as if I actually am restraining myself.

It feels as if I’m holding myself back; like there’s a wall up that I’ll know they’ll never break down because they don’t even know it exists.

And these uni-laterally perceived walls we put up create distance, at least that’s been my experience.

It creates this sense of me feeling as if this group of people I’m surrounding myself with, they don’t truly know me, and maybe they never will. And for me in particular, this becomes a dangerous, dangerous thing.

For me, because of this distance I’ve seemingly artificially and solely self-created, I never fully feel comfortable with the group, therefore, never create the friendships and relationships I think we all crave so badly as human beings.

And I guess, in the end, if I’m the only one who knows of this “other me” who exists….

Which one is really me? Because in a way, the other one doesn’t exist.

thanks for reading, 

cory