I feel innately fake sometimes.
Not entirely of my own doing, but when I look at how I approach meeting new people I have a mass of different facades I use in different situations.
I do have a partial understanding that a lot of the way I approach different situations has a lot to do with the fact that I have a very very loose grip on who I am as a person.
Which can be associated with my constantly fluid childhood. Always changing always adapting kept me alive. But the part of me that worries me the most is that I think that 'adaptability' switch is stuck in the ON position.
If that makes sense.
First week of school down.
I'm really enjoying the academic atmosphere that living on campus has, being around a large majority of educated people has a lot of advantages.
My 7:40am class (lab/lecture) is killing me slowly, its definitely what I am into as majors go, its just a pretty intense class. Learning all the hardware componants (most of which I already had exposure too in prior classes) plus the dynamic between said hardware and its connectivity is incredible.
The communication class is not as anxiety producing as I figured it was; again the difference between being in a classroom full of high schoolers compared to being in a room full of college level folks who all want to be in the class (not always for the same reason but being in a class to fulfill a requirement is definitely under 'want').
Making friends seems easy, my roommates are pretty much what I expected, rowdy guys my age who are here trying to do one thing or another. I am convinced that one of which is completely gay.
Rip'ed jeans little dog kinda gay. Rather he's terminally Twinkerbell.
I'd take the jeans but not the little dog.
Fyi- he's really nice to look at.
Did I mention my school has something like a 4:1 male to female ratio...its amazing how many guys are all in one area.
I digress.
School is what its suppose to be; exhausting. Which is to be expected.
Sunday I'm going back to Yondalla. See about these fake boobs I hear Frankie is going on about.
6 comments:
four to one? You've got to be kidding. Across the country more women than men go to college. Some people consider it a crisis.
College, when you are first separated from all parents, is a good time to begin to discover your true self.
I'm a 41-year-old straight woman, and was not a foster kid...but I've always felt I had a whole cast of characters inside. No, I don't mean schizo or multiple personalities! :) But I think to some extent, we all have a number of different "faces" we present to the world. I know I am very different talking to my husband in the evening before bed than I am talking to my mother on the phone in the morning! I astonished my husband when he visited me at work one day in Big Corporate Office -- later that day, he said "who was that woman with your name whom I met in your office?" I wasn't lying, I wasn't being dishonest, I was simply (and appropriately) tucking away the silly me, the little girl me, the sexy me, the motherly me, and putting the business me to the forefront.
I think my different faces are more similar to one another now than when I was younger, as I am more sure of who I am. I think there is a big difference between dishonesty, and simply different facets of your personality. I'm sure you talk to your roommates differently than you would talk to your boyfriend, for example.
I admire you for your adaptibility. In my opinion, it's a good thing.
Everyone else around you, even Twinkerbell, is also trying on their different identities and seeing how they fly. It's one of the things you're supposed to figure out when you're in college.
I'm halfway through my forties and only in the last few years have my different "selves" felt like just one me. I definitely change my behavior in different circumstances, but I worry less now about who I am and how to best present to others than I did when I was younger. Even in my little babies, I see remarkably different people depending on the situation. If they have spent any time with birth family prior to coming into care, when they are visiting with birth family they will often revert to the baby I met when they first arrived. I agree with you that it is a survival mode. Perhaps more pronounced in people with early trauma, but very normal I think.
I can relate to what you say about constantly adapting. I wasn't in foster care MUCH when I was a kid, but I was in a few foster places and other places, plus I was homeless on my own from a pretty young age. I never tried drugs or anything else that a lot of other kids did to survive... I survived, like you, by constantly adapting my personality to whatever felt safest in the situation I was in. For instance, I have pretty severe ADHD that can make me seem rather ditzy, but in certain situations... like when I was living in a crackhouse... exaggerating my ADHD problems to make myself seem almost mentally retarded was protection for me, because it meant people mostly left me alone or were protective of me. But when I went to school, I would adapt the personality of a really tough street kid, because that would protect me from getting teased by other kids.
Now that I'm an adult, I also find that it is hard to turn that adaptibility off!
Nice blog, by the way!
32 and this week I have played:
-Thecomfortin mom with tea and cookies.
-the trusted best friend who has always time to listnen
- the friendly neighbour who does voluntairy work (it feld bring being trapped in that role but I gained a lot of money for the cancersociety)
-the secy wife (Much better role to play)
-the carreerwomen on the schoolplayground (complete with heels, and after more then a year on the schoolplayground I still think too myself wow I am really good at pretending to be a mum)
I haven't go t a clue of who I really am but I quite like most of my personalities..
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