This issue had been bubbling and burbling on the back burner of my broken brain for quite some time, and today, I decided it was time I tried to write it out.

I am a sweet guy. Sensitive, understanding, genuinely interested in people and their problems, with a strong urge to help others and give them someone who listens and understands. I give good advice. I have a great deal of warmth and benevolence to my spirit. I would give the whole world a hug and tell it everything will be okay if I could.

Children love me. Once they get over the size factor, it’s like I am a big teddy bear to them. They appreciate that I am gentle with them, that I treat them with respect, that I listen to them and answer their questions, that I look out for them without being too controlling about it.

Animals love me too, because they know I am a big softie and love animals and love to pet cats and dogs and other critters. They can sense it. I have made friends with many an animal that, according to its owners, did not get along with anybody and in general did not like people one bit.

Well, that was before they met me.

And yes, I’m pretty smug about that.

So that is the warm and fuzzy wonderful side of my personality. It’s one I quite like in myself and one of which I am quite proud. The world needs all the sweet people it can get.

But then, there’s the other side of me. Another facet to the jewel, so to speak.

It has to do with the way this big brawling brute of a brain of mine works. Being an INTJ, I have a mind which is built for swift, incisive judgement. I am born to analyze and render judgement. My mind quite ruthlessly separates the truth from the fiction, distills the drops of goodness from the gallons of raw information, pierces directly to the heart of things without hesitation or mercy, and shatters through illusions at the speed of light.

At the heart of it all is a fanatical search for the truth. My “reality instinct”, that drive that causes all human beings to try to figure out what is really going on, is incredibly strong. So strong, in fact, that sometimes it frightens me.

I often have moments when I feel like my mind is pulling me along behind it. I have the leash, but it has control. Comes, I think, from having a lonely life with a lot of time for thinking and no social input telling me I should slow down. So I developed a mind so strong at that kind of thinking that m poor weak will can’t always contain it.

Sometimes, in fact, this rampant bear of a brain of mind has even overridden my compassion, and I consider my compassion to be my prime virtue, the one that is the basis for all others, the one that is my ultimate dividing line between good and evil.

And that is the problem. These two facets of my multifaceted personality sometimes come into conflict, and I am not sure how to bring them into greater harmony.

I have had the experience before of someone asking my opinion about something, and then being startled and hurt when the person they think of as this sweet guy suddenly comes out with a brutally direct, intensely incisive, no holds barred analysis that cuts right to the quick and spares nothing and nobody in its incision and candor.

It’s not something that has happened enough to be a “thing” with me, although that is quite possibly mostly due to my intense social isolation. But it is indicative of the conflict.

Now I am studiously avoiding that whole “which one is the real me?” bullshit. That is a very bad road to start down, and can only serve to increase the inner conflict by implying that it has to be one or the other in a patently useless false dichotomy, and thus setting up an inner war that can serve no purpose but to increase the conflict and suffering of the soul.

So no, I don’t ask “Which one is the real me?”. They both are. They are different facets of the same jewel, and the jewel is me. I am not my facets. I am the jewel.

The fact that these two facets appear, from the outside, to be inconsistent with one another does not mean that they truly are.

I would, however, like to learn to harmonize these aspects of my personality so that I do not accidentally hurt people with my blunt assessments.

It really makes me feel my socially isolated upbringing when I realize just how powerful that brutal drive towards the truth can be. When you are all alone with your thoughts, it doesn’t matter how savage and relentless your desire for the truth has become.

In fact, it can be a good thing. I am sure that this drive for the truth is what has given me great insight into how things really work and what is really going on. And for a writer, such insight is priceless. Helps a lot when trying to help others, too, because you have deep understanding of where they are coming from and that can mean a lot to people.

But this insight can be deadly too. You have to learn the hard way that not everybody sees things as clearly as you do, and that a casual remark about something that is obvious to you can actually come across as a brutal criticism that leaves a person feeling deeply stung and humiliated and like you have just stripped them naked in public.

In a bad way.

I think this is at the root of why I find it hard to get close to people as well. I am always afraid that I am going to hurt them unintentionally. Like if they get close to me, I will be unable to control this dangerous part of my mind and it will lash out at them and I will be left feeling horribly guilty and helpless and filled with the urge to flee.

Wow, no wonder I am so messed up. I didn’t know this about myself till I wrote it.

Well then, I declare this act of public therapy a success. Thanks, folks!