Written 2/16/10
Socially inept to a dangerous extreme, I am the awkward animal, or rather shadow. Clumsy and odd in every way. Sure I'm good at plastering on a smile or two, the severe fakeness of which is sickening most probably even to the most gullible and thick-headed. I like to be the imaginary friend, the quiet air to which you mumble when it's deafeningly quiet or roaringly loud and you just need to hear yourself think. I am blank, I am the awkward cardboard cutout that won't remain upright, and whose blank eyes will remain unyielding to your most heart-wrenching story, or otherwise wear an expression so exaggerated that it can almost seem like a parody.
But I assure you my intentions are always sincere. I have hidden myself away to myself so well that it is almost impossible to appropriately express and vocalize anything regarding myself to the stranger. I am the greatest hypocrite however in that I can survive a social situation only when hanging weakly to the role of listener as others supply me fodder about themselves. I am the quiet statue.
So securely is my own identity locked away that even writing about my personal self is a pain, a task. Every word must be searched for and dragged out of the darkness where, screeching in the light they deteriorate to dust. Weak, pitiful words come forth, I stutter like the old woman aged past senility to insanity, the art of speech forgotten and foaming at the mouth like a sick pet. This is me in a social situation. Any situation which entails the presence of another human being. And I disgust myself so thoroughly at these times. I am the enigma.
At a stage where I realize the value of friendship and envy the friendships between others I am utterly incapable of allowing entrance to anyone at all. And yet I expect the opposite of others. Unjudged entrance to their thoughts, where I will simply listen and nod, or offer advice, or react in some appropriate manner. And maybe if I like them I'll label this sad mockery of human interaction "friendship." Making friends in the past depended purely on compounding the effects of one lucky chance moment as much as possible. One person, by mere chance, or charity happens to speak to me and not find me disgusting. This person continues to speak to me for who knows what reason (maybe because I hence forth choose to make myself awkwardly available to them if I find them interesting), maybe for enough time for them to classify me as a "friend". This "friend" has other friends whom I am now inevitably lurking around. Soon these people may also be "friends". But what seperates me, perhaps from all regular people is even at this stage I have yet to share anything "personal" on my mind, any real concern, any significant thought. I simply make myself available as a reflective surface which some, perhaps through narcissm, may grow attachment for, a fondness of.
I aim for nothing if not to be "nice." But there is an extent, an understandable extent, to which a person can reveal their demons to a person who will only shower them with "niceness" showing no character or demons themselves. Its ironic but its possibly this very characteristic that makes me repulsive. I am the shadow of a human being among others. Yet I have no reason to hide, no reason for my unfounded paranoia. But then why?
Am I so pathetic as to fear the possibility of "getting hurt"? Being the gooey-in-the-center ROCK that I've made of myself it's hard to imagine that anyone could sting my "skin". Yet experience says otherwise. And more than this, the more serious real reason seems to be the inexplicable near-hatred I can have for myself. I've said I'm an enigma; I love myself and I hate myself, I am the most awesome human being and the most repulsive, the most easy to hate for myself. And it is this hatred that loves to lock away everything I supposedly hate or criticize about myself, which is apparently, almost everything that gives any real shape to my identity. And even in this frantic frustration, in some deep recess this "hatred" laughs at what a joke I am.
