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Stardate: 21 August, 2011
Listening to: “I’m Not Your Toy” by La Roux

“Although I know it’s unfair I reveal myself one mask at a time.”
Stephen Dunn

When I was younger, I used to want to be an actress. I will never forget my mother telling me to stay away from that career choice. She was adamant about not letting me even try out for school plays. Not because she thought I wouldn’t be good at it - but because she thought I would be too good at it… that I would lose myself in whatever role I was playing and not necessarily be able to find my way back.

I never really understood what she meant, and chose instead to see it as yet another way my parents were ruining-my-life and if I could just find my real family, then I could live a beautiful, cotton-candy life as the princess I knew I really was.

But I understand it now. 

I am a dangerously emotive person. Even when I’m happy, I’m like the colour yellow with just a shade of black underneath. I’m always a half-step away from falling desperately in love and I’ve been known to disappear into bathrooms to have a cathartic crying session - well, just because.

I think I let things affect me far more deeply than they reasonably should. I am completely wrapped up in a movie of my own making and going full-out for that Oscar performance.

My brother and I have talked about this - he has shared that he struggles with a similar manifestation of this trait (finding himself sometimes getting almost irrationally angry at the most inconsequential things). It’s like we take the “go big or go home” thing to a new level, emotionally. We’ve agreed that it is probably a direct result of our childhood - and how nothing was ever moderated. Things were either really, really good and happy or they were manic, tragic, awful.

I can’t help but seeing the world around me as written words on a page, and that page as part of a script for a movie of which I am the star performer. During my morning commute, I’ll imagine that I’m on my way to deal with something deliciously tragic and beautiful and I’ll have worked up several acts by the time my train reaches my destination. And then when I step off the train, I’ll start up with a completely different interpretation of the world around me - slipping in and out of emotions like I flip through dresses getting ready on a Saturday night. 

Which begs the question - can I discern the real from the imagined? I am fairly sure I can, though it takes quite a lot to get through the haze. Whenever someone is able to do that - even just a little bit - I find myself romanticising them to a somewhat unhealthy degree.

And so I find myself in relationships that make no sense and yet instead of backing away, I slip into a different persona and try to convince myself that no, everything is fine, this is really who I am meant to be only I just didn’t know it before. This farce continues often for as long as the other person will let it - or until I exhaust myself trying to keep all the versions of myself straight, and I slip up, and everything goes to hell.

At which point, I react emotionally… and yes, well, you see where this is going. Self-fulfilling prophecy, anyone? Since moving to England, I’ve been through at least deliciously melodramatic romantic experiences.

All of this came to mind today when I realised that about this time last year I was in the early stages of putting someone on a pedestal. Someone who really, really was not right for me. That entire experience ripped a piece out of me - not because I fell desperately in love (though true to form, there were little hiccups of moments where I thought maybe-possibly-perhaps), and not because the ending was horrific or anything.

I find myself a bit damaged because I spent that entire experience being someone other than myself. I was so terribly lonely at the beginning and doing what I always do - cycling through various personae to see which one clicked - and it just so happened that he responded to the one that was least like who I really am in so many ways. She was still razor sharp smart and funny - but she was muted. It was me, but me rinsed and filtered and wrung dry of most of my essential traits.

Oh, and I knew it was no good. I felt it deep inside, and I ignored it - all because I desperately wanted companionship and because this person happened to slip through my haze just a little bit.

I would like to say I’ll never do that again. I’m certainly going to try very hard.

I’m spending my time these days focusing on setting aside all my various masks, digging out that girl deep inside the nesting dolls. I want to take her out, dust her off, and hold her gently - reintroduce her to the world. She is a bit crazy, a bit dangerous, and a bit of a hot mess - but definitely worth knowing.

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