I’ve been feeling very aware, and very self conscious of, my habit of metering my words and my presence when I’m around people I don’t know that well. I don’t like this. It doesn’t serve me or anyone else. I’m getting very frustrated. My cousin Melissa is one person that I am the least guarded with. Here is a copy of our conversation about it today:
(4:10:23 PM) paul: Ok. Regarding Sally and her blog…. I see a lot of brilliance in her. I also perceive a HUGE amount of holding-back energy from her. As in, I feel like she is metering her words, she cares WAY too much about how she comes across to people. She tries to be funny but she’s not. And it’s not because she ISN’T a funny witty person – it’s this business of withholding, being guarded, that just kills it.
(4:10:33 PM) paul: I find myself getting really bugged at her about it.
(4:10:46 PM) paul: I think I’m seeing myself in that aspect of her.
(4:11:29 PM) paul: She’s nice, she’s cool, I like her… but she’s just not that compelling. If she would just fucking LET LOOSE and say what’s really going on, I think she would be AMAZING.
(4:12:24 PM) paul: Do you see me doing any of that? Being calculated? Withholding? Caring just a little too much about what people will think if I just fucking say what’s in my head?
(4:14:43 PM) paul: (FWIW, you are one person that I am most raw and forthright with. Everyone else gets a more metered version of me)
(4:23:37 PM) Melissa: it is hard for me to say
(4:23:43 PM) Melissa: i do get a totally different version of you
(4:23:53 PM) Melissa: So to look objectively and say “do you hold back?”
(4:24:12 PM) Melissa: Well, to me, yes. But you tell me about last nights flesh light experience
(4:24:38 PM) Melissa: I think the thing to note in this would be exactly what you are already doing, and that is finding out why it brings up in you what it does.
(4:26:54 PM) paul: Yeah… I feel like Sally is a mirror of sorts for me. I mean, why should I care so much about her blog? There area million-billion-trillion blogs out in the world. But hers? yeah. I can’t stop poking at it… which means this is about me, not her.
(4:27:19 PM) Melissa: yep….
(4:27:33 PM) Melissa: it is interesting to me though because her blog sparked a bit of annoyance in me as well
(4:27:44 PM) Melissa: it bugged me. Her whole blog
(4:27:51 PM) paul: Yeah
(4:28:43 PM) paul: Her blog is poking me in some spot of my own self loathing, and it seems to be in my lack of authenticity / my habit of holding back my full personality from people.
(4:34:14 PM) paul: AAAGGGHHH… I just feel like I’m holding back, and it’s so fucking hard to find what it is. It feels like I’m letting myself be held back by a tiny little thread. Total freedom is sooooooo close, and would be so powerful, but FUCK! It also feels so far away.
(4:39:37 PM) paul: I wish there was some magical pill I could take that would just … BAM! Make my walls come down, make me just present myself to the world as I am.
(4:39:45 PM) paul: Oh, wait, there is.
(4:39:49 PM) paul: It’s called pot.
(4:40:04 PM) paul: FUCK.
(4:40:14 PM) paul: I don’t want to become dependent upon it to be free.
(4:41:49 PM) Melissa: hahahaha
(4:41:56 PM) Melissa: you should start blogging our convos
(4:41:58 PM) Melissa: 🙂
(4:42:09 PM) paul: I’m being totally serious.
(4:42:23 PM) Melissa: i know you are.
Why am I even doing this? I don’t know… there are days I even accuse myself of grandiose narcissism for blogging in general. Part of me says, “Fuck it, nobody reads this thing anyway, and it’s cheaper than therapy.” Another part of me is frightened that people actually do read it, and maybe down the road, one of us is going to need some therapy because of it. A third part of me says, “You never know when your moment of honesty will help someone else out”, but then I just accuse that third voice of being an enabler of narcissistic voice #1.
I.
have.
no.
clue.
Maybe I am too hard on narcissists.
