A off-hand comment from a friend yesterday got me thinking about something.
I can’t pretend, I can only be me. I become what I am trying to portray.
I might be able to fake something for a while but soon, I either can’t do it anymore or it becomes a part of me. The integrity of who I am is very permeable.
It is very important for me to be in an environment that allows me to be me. I have many different and sometimes conflicting aspects so there are a lot of places/situations where I can be me, if only a portion of me. That also means I have a lot of environments to maintain so I can get around to being all parts of me.
I think this is the reason I was so worried about the move at work. And why it concerns me that I seem to be adapting.
I came to the realization recently that I don’t like being disingenuous (ie, pretending to be something I am not), which is why I got tired of playing D&D (and most other role playing games) and large portions of working at Ren Faire. When it is enough of a struggle to assert who you are in real life, it becomes uncomfortable to pretend, even if it is for a good reason (like, say acting or playing a game for fun).
I have a similar problem with role playing. I actually find that trying to roleplay makes me REALLY stressed, because I have to go from being the person I have spent 28 years trying to prefect and understand to someone I made up in a couple of hours. SEVERE insecurity induced by not knowing who I am. I stopped trying.
We are more maelable…
..than we realize, and we can adapt to change more quickly than we like to think. It doesn’t mean that we’re any less than who we were before.
It just means that we might have changed a little bit here and there…or we were like that to begin with and never even realized it…until something changed.
You are still you, and we love ya for that.
Re: We are more maelable…
What I have experiences is yes, I am malleable and I can adapt. And I lose pieces of myself if I mold to something that isn’t really me. I can do it, I do do it, I have done it and I have been damaged. It took me 4 years to recover from the last time I let it happen.
What you are talking about does happen and it happens most of the time. And it is ok. But the extreme is what I am talking about. I think most people can pretend and keep their selves intact. I don’t think I can. Ragani mentioned role playing, I am a good gamer because I become the character. I don’t talk about what it feels, I feel what it feels. It is a part of me. There is no distance.
I think you have a very strong sense of your core personality and the adaptions you make are on the surface, they don’t touch your core. You are still you even when you change to match your environment. I don’t think it works that way for me.