Monday, January 12, 2009

What happened to the person I wanted to be?


I've always felt that I could make myself be who I want to be simply by force of will. Simply by wanting it.

I want to be confident so I act confident and tell that little voice in my head to politely shut-the-hell-up. And it works.

Kind of.

I come across as more outgoing, more confident. My friends tell me they wish they could be like that. What they don't know is that it really is all just an act. It's just fake it til you make, baby.

I don't feel more confident. I'm still a self conscious little ball of scared timidity just like everyone else. Is it this way for everyone? Are people who seem confident just acting?

So this has been my life up to now. I've been deciding how I want people to see me and acting that out as I best see fit. When I was a kid, I used to always wonder what people would say about me when I was dead. Would anyone cry? Would anyone even come to my funeral? And if they did, would they because they wanted to or because they thought they had to? Apparently, I was a morbid child...

Reguardless... all this nonesense I seem to be spouting leads me to nothing. I do seem to be rambling.

Sorry. Let me start again.

The point is that while driving the utterly straight highway I was thinking that somehow I've changed without ever realizing it. And I'm still not the person I want to be. If anything, I feel like I've gone backwards. I passed a person on the highway and just stared at him as I drove passed. When I got back oaver in the right lane, I saw him wave at me in my rearview mirror. A couple of years ago, as I passed, I would smile really big and wave to see if I could brighten their day. And I did it to everyone. It totally made my day to have a trucker honk their horn and flash their lights at me after I waved. (Ok... so I like the attention... it's not like I flashed them or anything...seriously, I didn't.) But now, I've become one of those people who is so selfabsorbed in my own life, my own problems, that it doesn't even occur to me to try to smile at a stranger anymore.

When did I become that person?

One of my resolutions was to smile more. I must have seen it coming to make that a resolution. But somehow, it still slipped past me. How did I get so grumpy? I can't even pull myself up to act it anymore. I'll think about trying to smile at a passing driver but they pass before I ever work up the energy to pull up the corners of my mouth.

What happened to the person I wanted to be? Why is she not here yet?

and worse yet...

Why did I give up on trying to keep being her?

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