My Cracked Shell

Life is weird. And sometimes, we're forced to take a closer look at just that life, and in particular, ourselves. Our personalities are certainly complex, and the factors that make up this personality even more so. "If something's not broken, don't fix it," is the ever sounding proverb of our day, and throughout my life I seem to have added to this, making it something like "If you manage to ignore something that's broken, you don't have to fix it."

I am an egg. Well, a complex egg, but it works well for my analogy. I surround myself with the always thicker shell, protecting the vulnerable soft core of my existence. People can be cruel, people don't always consider your feelings, and this especially counts for people whom you've never met. New people, thus, don't get the same Christian everyone that knows me get, they get the ridiculously shielded and guarded Christian, and this one is not a very personable character. I avoid new people's eye contact, avoid their questions by answering in short, amputated sentences to not give away anything that might have them attack or make fun of my self or appearance, and due to this Christian is an arrogant a**hole the first time they meet me. People who by nature don't give people second chances or fair shakes at a second impression then end up sticking to this feeling of CK as a bastard, a bloated idiot who thinks he's too good to even talk to them. If they just knew that just inside that hard outer shell, a scared, fluffy, considerate and friendly Christian is hidden, just waiting for that added security of a second meeting to bloom, to shed some insecurities and reveal the second layer of myself.

My egg white. My egg white's white, yes, but not in the exact angelical sense. I am in no way perfect, even though the people who brush me off after getting rejected by my hard shell might think that I think so. I know I need people around me, after all people are flock animals and thus need closeness and socialization, but I have always been highly selective when it comes to my friends. Quality over quantity, so to speak, has been my motto, and considering the fairly small number of people who choose to give me a new chance after an encounter with my arrogant casing, I'd say the people who have gathered to make up my friend circle testify to the effectiveness of this filter. It's sad though, that I reject people based on my own insecurities, and this is certainly something I'll have to work on, seeing as it also makes the number of people that dislike me bigger than the ones that like me. And that is no way to be happy. I was told today, and this is probably why I thought I'd do a post on my inner workings, that I am somewhat of a needy, pushy and intrusive person, which actually blew me away. I happen to think my good qualities outweigh my bad ones, so hearing that people I call my friends can only handle a low daily dose of Christian isn't easy to take. But I guess it makes some sense, too much of anything is bad, after all, and I realize that I can be a bit much when exposed to me for longer periods of time. The fact that my hand-picked network of good friends is small results in more time I will spend with each one, and thus a higher chance of being taken in larger, harder to swallow doses.

If my outward personality, the real outward personality, is the egg white, then what could the yolk be? Well, my soul I guess. The base of me being good or evil, or the intricate balanced gradient inbetween the two. My hopes, wishes and aspirations, my deeply rooted insecurities and the ever present history of my mess of a family, all things that will always be at the center of me together with whatever degree of selflessness, love and other good things I possess. And the many memories I have, good and bad, the memory of my grandmother and my cat King Farouk I, the memory of being bullied for being fat in school and then rising up against it one day when I chased down my oppressor and pounded him to the ground, the many times I have been ignored or looked down upon as a person just for being fat, or even the memory of my parents' happy marriage before everything was blown to pieces, are all stored in my own, deeply rooted yolk.

It's not easy being anyone, and we certainly have a million things that decide just what we think, feel or act like in any given moment, all a combination of so many factors. In order for people to understand me, which I feel is happening less and less, I felt I had to write this to have them understand what the "me" is really comprised of. And seeing as I don't even understand it, and other people obviously think they do and that what they are looking at is broken, I felt I would give my side of "me" without being told that what I think I am is incorrect. I certainly have things to work out, as do people who think they don't (and they probably more than the rest of us), but in the end all that matters is how we feel about ourselves. I might be broken, by so many standards, but inside of me I also know that there are so many things that are complete and beautiful, and I will not let a few cracks in my armor tear me apart.

Brought to you by the life philosophy part of Everwood, which I have recently come to appreciate. "Moving away isn't going to fix the things that are wrong inside." A quote that I felt hit the spot.

Labels: Personal Issues, Philosophy, Ponderings

posted by CK @ 08:10