A victim of my own creation
For the last year or so I have struggled to find a voice while writing blog posts; struggled to find anything that I perceived to be of interest to write about. Friends and acquaintances occasionally provided a gentle nudgeand the advice that they really want to hear aboutme not books, games, movies, or any other incidental trappings of my life.
Perhaps it's time. Perhaps it's time I wrote aboutme.
It is in my nature to be optimisticbut I have realised this blind optimism is on behalf of othersnot myself. I tell others that things will be okay, that things can be done, that I can get things doneand then face an internal meltdown as I struggle to meet the expectations I have given others. I know why it happens too.
I appear simple. To anybody who knows meeither as a close friend, a colleague, or even familyI am easy to work out. Logical. Dependable. My emotions are easy to read. This is all an act though.
An Aunt (who could obviously see straight through me) commented many years ago that nobody in the family really knew meand a particularly close cousin once remarked that “my walls were made of mud, and she was the rain”.
The reason for the act? Laziness.
By appearing to be outwardly simple, I don't have to deal with questions such as “how are you”. When people ask each other “how they are”, they don't really want to knowit's just a phrase they throw out there.
Most people don't really want to know about each other's troubles. They have their own. Imagine if you really told somebody what was on your mindif you really told them that you are sometimes lonely, sometimes annoyed with them, sometimes annoyed with everybody, that you sometimes feel that you don't fit inthat you don't belong. You can imagine their response “oh.“followed by an uncomfortable silence.
People really want to tell you how they are when they ask how you are.
Those who knowor at least have an idea how you are, don't ask. They are just there. They know that “being there” is enough. When they ask how you are, you both know that you're not going to tell themthey are just filling dead air. They are however watching your body language those who know you read far more from the tilt of your head, the path of your eyes, and the corner of your mouth than anything that comes out of it.
The laziness behind all this leads others to expect a great deal from you. Others are so often wrapped up in their own pressures that it is of advantage to them that you do not require thought. By being simple you become a resource. This would be great if resources were infinite, but they are not.
Yes is easier than no. Yes satisfies other people. Yes makes others go away. Yes makes people leave you alone.
The remarkable and unfathomable end result is that I have so many friends, given this self destructive nature. A nature that perhaps makes me “of value” to others, and yet in the long term of less value than first imagined.
Perhaps in terms of the amount of me that people get, “enough” is “good enough” for mostand maybe more than they are accustomed to from others.
Who knows.