Decided to talk about my “smooth persona” defense mechanism today.
What the hell, I have been digging into the soft tissues of my deepest issues, might as well tackle one of the biggest.
I do this knowing I am throwing myself down one hell of a rabbit hole.
Anyhow, here it is :
Oh well, thank goodness I am primarily about the words not the image. Which is, I suppose, why I blog so much.
The words need to get out of my head somehow.
Anyhow, on being fine. The truth is, I don’t even know if I’m fine or not. This smooth persona of mine, the unflappable affable adorable Fru, runs pretty deep and it’s precisely because, like I say in the vid, I don’t like being me. I’d rather be him.
So I guess I spend so much time pretending to be him that the real feels safe hiding in the depths of my mind and most of the time I can fool myself into thinking I am him.
And I am. But I’m also not.
It’s very complicated.
The brutal truth is that if I am not my smooth persona, I have no idea who the hell I am. There’s an impostor at the controls deep inside of me and I know next to nothing about him except that he’s very, very scared all the time.
No wonder I prefer to pretend to be Fru. It lets me get away from that eternal fear (which can become explosive rage at any moment) and pretend to be calm.
But I am calm. It works. Mostly.
It’s all a mirror maze in my head. Image and reality collide and overlap and all the main lines of defense in my head band together to try to stop me from talking about this.
Well too bad. I’ve made the incision and we’re going deep.
I find it virtually impossible to even imagine responding to “How are you?”, even very sincerely said, with anything other than some variant of “I’m fine”.
But if I am so “fine” then why is my life how it is? Why do I feel the need to spend all my waking hours staring into screens and determinedly NOT being myself? Why do I have this fear as cold as the void wrapped around my heart and constantly threatening to glaciate me out of existence if I don’t obey it?
If I’m fine, why am I crazy?
A partial answer would be “because I hide how sick I am even from myself”. I learned, at some point, to pull myself together and put on a brave face and go out into the world as if I was not in pain, and I’ve been doing it so long that I believe it most of the time.
And objectively speaking, why wouldn’t I? Who wants to be sad and hurting? Who wouldn’t want to flee that shit any way he can?
Of course, that means never addressing the real, deep down, carcinogenic rot that eats away at my soul and may some day consume me.
Which is dumb. Understandable, but dumb.
I guess that the first step in dealing with that endemic pain is to go down to where it is and just sit with it for a while. Let it be felt and heard. Witness its message.
It won’t be easy or fun, but by God, it might just work.
And IDGAF about the pain any more anyway.
More after the break.
Who is this guy anyway?
One thing about being an arguably fake-ish person is that you have control over a fake version of you.
You can sculpt and mold a manufactured persona to be (in my case) as charming and pleasing and fun as possible without the “real you” getting in the way.
I dunno. Maybe that’s not that different than how most people form their outer social persona when they’re a teen and I am just too socially damaged to know it.
And of course, there is no clear line of demarcation between the fake me and the “real” me. This persona of mine might not be entirely “real” in the absolute existentialist sense but I have worn it for a very long time and it fits me very well.
So don’t worry, gentle reader, I am not planning any sudden, radical shifts of personality. I will still be the same dear sweet lovable Fru I have always been until further notice.
I can’t imagine wanting to be any other way. Being lovable is too much fun.
But I will allow that unexpected aspects of my personality might emerge, I might get a bit louder, a bit pushier, maybe a tad obnoxious at times as I try out a more solid and self-confident version of myself.
I still don’t see a path out of my self-loathing that doesn’t involve its opposite, self-confidence, in large amounts.
In other words, I think I need to let myself get that “big ego” everyone was so worried I would have as a kid.
I mean what the hell. I have amazing abilities. I can do things nobody else can do. I see things – possibilities, opportunities, solutions – that nobody else sees. I have enormous intellect, charisma, personality, charm, and wit – it’s only fitting that I have an ego to match it, or at least enough of one to freaking like myself.
The alchemy of my soul demands that I synthesize the antidote for the poisons within me. Simply removing the toxins without it is not an option.
In a way, it’s all about learning to harness the incredible energies within me so they can take me somewhere instead of treating them like they are the enemy and suppressing them in order to make being a inert more comfortable.
Fuck being comfortable.
I want to be alive.
And if that means tackling my anxiety head on, so be it.
I have Xanax!
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.