When or where do you feel most like yourself?
Hmmm, good question.
I think generally I’m usually my ‘real’ self around those who I have a really strong connection with. That’s not to say that I’m not being ‘me’ when I’m with everybody else I know, but there are different versions of me, depending on who I’m around, and the situations that I find myself in.
Just reading that, I realise that I’m actually quite weird, and perhaps even to a degree, I’m not even allowing myself to be honest with myself in that I’m not being my ‘true’ self 100% of the time… and if it were somebody else coming to me and saying that about themselves, then I’d be telling them exactly that – you’re not being true to who you are, and you shouldn’t feel as though you need to censor yourself in order to fit in.
…and yet I can’t take my own advice.
Typical.
Thinking back over the years, I’ve been quite up and down in terms of ‘who’ I am and the version of ‘me’ that I show to people which, in hindsight, is a bit stupid. Why am I so afraid to be my weird crazy self? At what point did I become so heavily concerned about editing myself in order to please other people. How fucking wrong does that sound!? Look, I completely agree that when you’re me, and you tend to have a mouth like a sailor, there are times and places when that is acceptable, and when it is not; I get it. I truly do… but my potty-mouth aside, why should I have to compromise who I am, just to keep other people happy??
Over the past couple of years moreso, I’ve discovered that I’ve done this to myself more and more, and I feel as though every time I do that, I’m chipping away a little piece of me. It’s like that saying, ‘Everytime you make a wish, a fairy gets it’s wings’ in which the opposite is something along the lines of ‘Every time you do something bad, God kills a puppy’ … and that’s kind of how I feel when I believe that I’m compromising who I am. Every time I have to pretend that I’m somebody I’m not, a piece of me dies inside.
So if I happen to be having a conversation with you, and I just happen to mention in passing that I’m dead on the inside… I’m probably being serious.
But then, rather than focusing on what has already happened, I should be putting more of an effort into discovering alternative and positive pathways to rectify this situation. Right? Well, I have only a couple of people that I truly feel as though I can be myself around. Literally, I think there’s only 3 of them. Those are the people that I feel really ‘get me’. Perhaps because I can connect with them on a level that is quite rare in others… and so when I find somebody who shares the same traits, I’m hooked.
Let’s be friends!!
But when you’re around people who aren’t like that, it’s a real struggle. I can babble away with random shit that will crack me up with laughter, and to others, it just induces weird looks because they simply don’t understand. And there’s nothing worse than finding something hilarious, only to then have to try and explain why you find it so damn funny you end up with sore cheeks and tears rolling down your face.
Basically, I just need people in my life that share my sense of randomness and my sense of dark, twisted, sarcastic humour. This is why I feel as though people like Kathy Griffin, Chelsea Handler and Whitney Cummings are actually my spirit animals.
Let’s face it, I need sarcastic bitches in my life. Then I can truly be me.