Stop Putting On An Act

(Trigger warning)

Putting on an act has its allure. You get to be someone you always wanted to be and, if, for some reason, someone rejects you, you don’t take it personally. It’s not really you! It was all in a act! You’re awesome!

Except, putting on an act is great until it isn’t anymore. As with most things to do with concealment and deception, all is terribly exciting until you get caught. Then, let’s be real here, it just sucks.

I used to put on a huge, big, crazy act that I was the most confident person on the planet and that my self-esteem was so impenetrable, I was like Superwoman. Or Wonder Woman. One of those women who are strong and wear weird underwear over their clothes. Whatever. Moving on. God, I get off topic easily.

I had convinced myself that admitting insecurity was admitting weakness, thus opening myself up to an onslaught of criticism that I thought would be waiting around the corner for me if I ever dropped the act. As if there were a thousand people just waiting to rip my self-esteem to shreds if only I’d let them. Not this time, thousands of fictional people I have created irrationally! I have this very unsteady and unstable fake confidence that you could probably break down with one word that you can’t ever penetrate! Ever! Ever, twice. That’s serious business.

Ok, I’m actually trying to make a serious point here, but I keep making jokes.

Putting on an act. Right. What I’m trying to say is that pretending you’re something that you’re not seems to work at first, but comes crashing down, hard. And, worse than you’d expect.

And, here’s where the trigger warning at the top comes in handy:

Last year, I was riding high, full of strength and confidence. Being the rock had its benefits, surely, but I would sometimes feel extremely pressured to never let the “real me” show, yet I somehow managed to silence that stress time and time again. Then, the unexpected happened and one of my dearest friends took his own life. That group of friends and myself were devastated, confused, and incredibly saddened by what had happened.

For those next six months, I wasn’t living; I was surviving. Additionally, one of my best friends at the time developed hatefulness and resentment towards me, mostly because I wasn’t being a rock for her. She had come to expect my strength as something to be depended on and I can’t fault her for thinking that. Because of her expectations and my not being able to live up to them, we have hardly spoken a word to each other in almost two years.

For months, I was a disaster, since I was not only mourning the physical loss of a friend, but also the emotional loss of another friend. Full of grief and completely incapable of processing what was happening, my impenetrable strength was exposed for the fraud that it was. Except, only I noticed that it was fraudulent, since all my friends, colleagues, family members, still saw me as being strong and confident and unable to be affected. I was disparaged and lonely is hardly a powerful enough word to describe my state.

I ended up going to counseling during that time and she urged me to ask my loved ones where their support was and, like a broken record, people answered in almost the exact same way, “I thought you were fine. You’re so strong.” I was so far from fine, I didn’t even know fine existed anymore.

Opening up myself to being vulnerable and asking for help was both the most difficult thing I have done, to date and the most healthy thing I’ve done for myself, to date. At times, I had to articulate, word for word, how distraught I was, how I needed to run to the bathroom daily to sob or breathe or just be alone with my grief.

For that reason, 2008 was simultaneously the worst and best year, thus far in my life. I learned the downside to deception, but also what it means to truly be authentic and honest about who I am. Sure, I don’t feel comfortable admitting insecurities or weaknesses, but I also know that I am more interested in giving the people around me a true representation of who I am, rather than a carefully constructed and unstable perception.

I’m extremely conscious of what I put out there and how others see me. Sure, I’m almost completely see-through, but I really wouldn’t have it any other way. I’d much rather people take me or leave me based on who I am, not who I am pretending to be. And, although, shape-shifting into what other people want provides the benefit of potentially more friends and less friction, I am less interested in that lifestyle.

At least now I know that if I ever truly need support, I won’t have to spend countless hours explaining to all my loved ones that the rock they are looking at is actually a crumpled piece of paper on the floor, “but you’d never see that, because I’d never let you.”

But, now I’m letting you. And, it feels both incredibly frightening and incredibly beautiful. Cheers.