On being seen
One memory seared in my mind was a fairly innocent thing: recently I was in a car with two close friends, and when the topic of maturity came up one said I was far from it. The thing that struck me was maturity is something I often get complimented about, especially by my therapist: the person I consider knows me the best. The weird thing was I didn’t disagree with her, at least from her point of view. With the main group of people I interact with in person, I end up joking around, being relatively emotionally volatile, and fairly immature as a whole. I haven’t really had many chances to be vulnerable, or to talk about serious things as a whole; this is something I really enjoy doing overall. I end up being kept as a one dimensional person as comedic relief.
This ended up getting to me, since the more and more I thought about it, even through all the self-work I’ve done over the years, despite being an intricate multi-dimensional person, only one side is shown to a group of people at a time. It ends up becoming an instant thing, which personality someone ends up getting to know once I meet them for the first time. This made me immeasurably sad, akin to an artist being told to paint only with one color. Yeah you can still create great things, but it feels a bit lonely in some way. I guess that analogy broke down fairly quickly.
The way I see things is everyone has different niches they need met, just like an ecosystem. Sometimes you need some people you can joke around with, and stay a child at heart. Other times you need someone you can talk about past trauma with in a safe way. Each of these are different niches that need to be satisfied for fulfillment. Sometimes people can satisfy multiple of these boxes, and often just one. The thing that stings is when barely any niches are satisfied. You end up feeling like you lose a sense of who you are, almost like an actor becoming synonymous with a character in a hit tv show. Yeah I can make my friends laugh, but past that what sides of each other do we share?
This draws me to my current conclusion of how we ultimately want to be seen. It feels like a basic universal desire to be acknowledged, having someone see all these different parts of you: the good, the bad, the ugly, and in doing so validate your individuality as a person. I hope that I don’t need validation forever, but having someone see a previously thought extinct creature is a thousand times better then promising it’s still out there somewhere. It’s hard to change solidified social relationships, after all how are you supposed to go from asking someone to work on a project to talking about childhood trauma? Thank god for therapists at least. At the end of the day, I think if you find someone who sees all these different parts of you, likes you, and is someone you’re attracted to, go ahead and ask them out. That being said this might just be my sold-dream of a relationship, and hopefully you don’t need some miracle person to satisfy these niches for you. Actually the more I think about it, maybe being in a relationship is bad if you don’t already have your niche’s somewhat covered. Normally I try to edit these posts to refine my thoughts, but I think it’s better to leave this whole derailed train of thoughts out in the open. It’s a testament to the fact I learn from my mistakes; I guess I have to blindly believe that these things have inherent value, because otherwise I think I couldn’t handle it.