The Dark Princess

With half-hearted apologies, here is a post from my alter ego...

"The Dark Princess." That's what my dad called me in my teens. I used to dress in dark colors and write copious amounts of depressing poetry and try to wring pity from the people around me. (Obviously, it was a joke to my dad.) Now, while not a complete opposite, those whom I interact with often consider me outgoing. Now, I have friends whom I strongly suspect consider me frivolous and shallow. Not exactly what I was going for.

Over the years, I came to realize that personalities like mine (negative) were draining. Nobody I liked being around behaved like me, and they certainly didn't like being around me. But now I'm visiting this issue again from the flip side. And it's incredibly frustrating to think I've changed so much to gain hardly any ground.

I feel more "me" than I was in my teens. No wonder - I spent so much time hiding who I was I convinced myself I was the withdrawn, tragic figure I always presented. But why did I hide? I think, for one, I didn't know who I was. I've always been a couple of steps behind my peers in some ways, and particularly in the identity department. But I also think that part of the HPS (hidden personality syndrome - my own term, I think) was due to several factors - growing up surrounded by adults, certain incidents that happened when I was small, my parents' divorce (I've only just begun to process how that impacted me), a natural tendency to find more satisfaction in my own imagination than in the company of others, and barely any true encouragement for the things I showed an aptitude in (art and writing). And I believe pressure to continue in something because you're proud of your child's talent/ability (not evil in itself, but detrimental if devoid of the next quality) is quite different than nurturing that talent/ability because your child's joy in it brings you joy.

But I think I've digressed a bit. What I'm trying to say is this whole approach of making my self more "attractive" by having a more friendly, assertive personality... it's not working. You may contend that it's due to a lack of conviction, and to a certain extent you may be right. But consider the fact that sometimes I actually am confident in myself, that I know I'm being witty and people are laughing because my comments are genuinely funny, or that I walk away from the mirror in the morning fairly satisfied that I've made myself attractive, or that I finished a creative project that I know has stretched me and exceeded my own expectations.... All those little moments add up.

Yet it only takes one little pin-prick to deflate me, to convince me I'm undesirable, unloveable, unworthy, and will always remain so. Those little self-affirming moments? They weren't bricks I built my self-image with, they were grains of sand.

So much for confidence building confidence.