I wouldn’t call it an epiphany. That’s a bit over dramatic and makes it sound like a life changing moment of clarity, something that changes everything.
It wasn’t like that.
Instead it was just a thought that popped into my head.
It’s Thursday evening. Work wasn’t great today. I have a cough that won’t go away. I’m stressing about lots of things. I have a ton of really invasive paranoid thoughts at the moment. I’m tired. Once I get home I go upstairs and sit at the computer, my intention is to add lasts night Pathfinder rolls and data to my spreadsheet. Instead I fall asleep, only a doze for 15 minutes or so.
I pop over to the shop to grab something and as I’m walking back I’m thinking that I need to go to band rehearsal in twenty minutes. I don’t really want to go. I feel low on energy, I feel anxious, I feel unhappy. Over the weekend I shared some voice recordings of a song I had written with the rest of the band, they were positive and wanted to work on it this week. I wasn’t in the mood for that now. I felt low already, and sharing something I had written and having to talk about it would just feel vulnerable.
I started thinking about how I couldn’t go to rehearsal and be low. I had to be “me”. Sarcastic, happy, energetic. All the things that I just wasn’t feeling today. And then it hit me, this internal question that scared me a little.
I thought about how good I am at “putting on a show”. Playing the part even when I’m not feeling it. I thought about how often I do that. I thought about the version of me I portray at work. The version I portray around my friends. I even thought about the version of me I portray to my kids.
Then I wondered. If I am so good at acting and playing the version of me that people see, or that I choose them to see. Well, who is the real me? Do I even know?
That thought has stuck me with all evening and now into the early hours of the night.
I really am not sure if I know who I am. Am I the happy joker that I put on? Am I the insecure, scared boy I feel like most days? Am I the angry, venomous dickhead that I let out when something annoys me? Am I the strangely obsessive freak who has to wash the dishes in a really particular way and order every time? Am I the person afraid to face everyday life, and so locking himself away and painting tiny little superheroes? Am I the person so incredibly afraid of being boring that I just avoid conversation and small talk and just withdraw rather than engage?
Those are all parts of me, but which one is the real me? Which one is my true personality? Am I just putting these acts on even to myself?
I’m not sure that I’ll ever actually know.
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