And the Academy Award goes to…..

The thing I have realised about social media is that many people reveal their true selves without meaning to. The woman who continually posts pouty selfies shows how shallow and empty her life is.

The endless photos of food at fancy restaurants show the lifestyles of the well off and privileged and they don’t even know that what is normal for them is not normal for 80% of the worlds population.

The Mum who only ever posts pics of her kids shows that her attention is totally on them and that the husband is really just a sperm donor.

The gay guy only ever posting shots of chiseled bodies shows his obsession with external beauty and how tragic it must be to live thinking that the next hottie will make him happy.

Me I lie. I don’t want people to meet the real me. I post stuff that makes people laugh to hide my misery, post thoughtful ponderings to make me seem like I have my shit together when really I am anything but together. I try to write shit that is inspiring to make it seem like I live life with this awesome sense of possibility and courage when I am actually  pessimistic and cowardly.

Writing allows you to craft stuff. You can write and rewrite and edit until you are satisfied with what you want to present to the world. It can be a total act, characters are created by writers all the time.

I am an actor. People don’t like to be around people who are miserable. When they ask you “How are you?” they don’t want to know that you are depressed or anxious. Misery sucks energy out of not only the sufferer but also those around them.

When I was a little kid I had little ability to regulate my emotions. If I was sad or upset it was obvious. I found that children were like a pack of dogs. They sense weakness and instability then attack it without mercy. After a couple of brutal non physical assaults I soon learned that this weakness thing could get me in a lot of trouble. The answer; hide how I feel, even better switch my feelings off. Replace the weak sensitive heart and replace it with a heart of stone. Become immune to insults and teasing, learn to cover the vulnerability with some deflector shield that diverts attention so that no one really knows what is going on.

The weakness and instability gets a disguise of strong and confident and it works. People are not only fooled but they like this character, this manufactured thing. Like the person who lies so much that they begin to believe their own lies I struggle to seperate what is an act from what is real. The act becomes so convincing that I even start to believe I might be this way.

Like Hollywood actors who lose themselves in their parts, I deserve an Oscar for losing myself in mine. For them it’s an accolade for a job well done, for me it’s a hollow empty victory as the part is a mixture of truth and fantasy and in total is not the real me .  It’s the price I pay to fit in and be acceptable and hide my vulnerability. It’s a fairly tragic state but I don’t know how else to do it.

My goal and intention is to  let more people know the real me. Some will accept it, some will reject it, most won’t even care. In order to do this I must embrace the shame of my label (mentally ill) and the vulnerability of exposure and possible scorn and rejection. I suspect that the people who will scorn or judge me are in the minority but I have the painful past experience of having people react badly towards me when they know the truth. People will tell me that the ones who reject me were not worth having as friends. That may be true but it doesn’t make the loss any easier to handle.

I modify my behaviour depending on who I am with to fit in. Sometimes I modify my behaviour to be accepted by one group and excluded by another even though I am quite comfortable with both groups. Belonging is one of my top 5 values so the drive to fit in and be accepted is very strong. The thing about being mentally ill is that the stigma of it is strong like being a black american in the 50’s or gay in the 80’s. When people are uncomfortable with my label (the mentally ill one) they can unwittingly push me away. It may be their prejudices or just fear of something that is different but I can feel the push away even though it’s not physical.

To drop the act and be more authentic is probably what I should be doing, but right now I don’t feel up to it, so more Oscar winning performances will be required