inner reflection #75294832

growing up I had a lot of people I could call friends. I didn't really get into drama or fights with anyone, I let people be their own person around me, and I strived to carry the least amount of judgment when people came to me for help or advice. While I knew lots of people, I knew I was liked by many, not really hated by any, I didn't like to be around people. They were loud, often mean, and sometimes just a bit too full of energy for me, who was and still continues to be what I would describe as a mouse in the corner of the house. When I am out in public I typically choose to remain silent and watch, talking when I need to or when others want to make conversation. I don't really think I am a person built for loud or action filled events. I prefer to stay sidelined or stand behind someone in action, and I am not a leader at all.

growing up was a mixture of emotions from feeling left out but also not feeling like I desired any of the activities my friends were doing, I didn't have many friends with the same interests as me, and while this is perfectly fine for me now, as a teen, it was hard to navigate exactly what I was feeling. i don't know what it was, but eventually, people started asking me for advice, telling me secrets they had previously held from me. when I reached my sophomore year of high school I didn't really feel like I had changed but I know I had changed drastically, a change that I think people noticed, but didn't want to pry or ask to much about. I became more reserved, my behavior wasn't as childish, and if I'm being honest I don't know what my sophomore year was like, or how I looked to others. I shut off the world, I started keeping more to myself, and because I felt so lonely, I tried making other people feel not lonely, hoping maybe by making someone else feel seen, with my own words, I would be able to manipulate myself with my words.

I went to college and got better, I didn't feel lonely and I knew that even if I didn't spend a lot of time surrounded by people physically I still had friends, people who cared about me, people who knew me even if I didn't really know that they knew who I was. for a lot of my life I felt like a blank canvas, slowly filling up the space, painting, repainting, retouching, cutting parts out, putting new ones in; creating the image that would be what people saw me as. over the years that canvas has been ripped to shreds, thrown out, using its damaged pieces and new material to rebuild it into something new, scrapping that, and then just constantly scrapping parts, finding new parts to fix, finding the old parts laying around and putting them back on just for fun, to see what would happen. when I say i've put my personality back together a million times, i'm not being facetious, I have actually genuinely glued multiple forms of myself back together in order to form a new one (which is actually one of my favorite habits, to pick and choose different character traits, whenever and however you want, just for fun).

I think a lot of people see this at first and think I am a person who lies, who pretends, and isn't genuine. and while I can be honest and say I do pretend a lot, my personality is never not genuine, I don't put on appearances for personal benefit, or to manipulate people. It's hard to know that I am so many people in one person, it gets difficult to maintain the balance of all of the roles I'm meant to play. I don't really think that means I'm not a genuine person though. I can count on my hands the number of best friends I have, and most didn't really like me at first. Being human has always been a little hard for me, I don't really feel fully whole, always like something has been missing, a feeling that only really goes away when I'm around people and I know I'm wanted around. It's hard to talk about a regular life when I barely remember last night. It's almost impossible to maintain relationships with people when you forget to do the basic day-to -day things but remember the smallest piece of information about them that you know makes them who they are. I never felt like I could fully articulate my words because the way I view life and the world is so deliberately open ended, keeping my schedule empty until it needs to be full, talking only when I need to, going out when you can avoid seeing other people, spending down time thinking about every aspect of your life, past, present, future, wondering who is going to come into your life, who is going to leave, who stays, always telling people you live in the present, always living in the moment, when you know all aspects of time are important, I couldn't be in the present without the past, I can't go to the future if I can't fix the flaws that caused me to fail in the past, I can't live in the present because it's not the end goal.

I try not to think too hard about anything because it's easy for things to get dark in the mind space. My favorite thing I've learned about living is that life is dual-sided and hypocritical. If you really want to get morbid, humans have been forced and will continue to be forced into scenarios where they are going to have to choose between their morals or their safety. realistically you shouldn't have to ever be in a position like this, but its life isn't it? the whole point is to fuck you up enough to see how long you can live. life is the biggest hypocritical bitch I have ever met. the kind of friend who lies about things just to lie, someone who needs the attention to thrive. never fair, not always graceful, and difficult. Maybe it's because I have so many personalities so I admire the fact life can be that hypocritical bitch, but I think knowing the fact is enough to at least attempt to work and be a better person. I don't think the meaning of life is a one set thing, I actually don't really think it should be discussed, I prefer to live my life as open ended as possible. really how could I have set in stone plans when life is in fact, a bitch?