The Other Self

I got done recently looking at old pictures, quite a few of which were pictures of myself. After viewing those photos, it occurred to me that we are quite rarely who we believe ourselves to be; although, of course, this could be my experience alone.

When I think of who I am, what I know, how I think, and what I can do, it's a very different image in my head than the one that greets me in the mirror. Most notably, when I think of all the different ways that I act, according to my many interests and thoughts, the impression I would get, as an outside observer (ie, someone not me), is that I'm shifty and somewhat unpredictable. A sycophant. Someone continuously plotting and full of ulterior motives.

At the same time, I'm very aware that many people trust me outright, and usually after initially meeting. I don't understand this at all; this dichotomy.

I have very real ideas and feelings about who I am and who I strive to be. I want to be trustworthy, fair, kind, strong, funny and fun, serious when I need to be serious, loyal, far-sighted, open-minded, I would love to be brilliant, and generally a decent human being. What I see in pictures, and the mirror, but mostly pictures, is someone disturbingly quiet, judgemental, constantly mildly dis-interested, overweight in the lazy disgusting sense, and I usually look slightly constipated. I can only hope my word choice reflects a better image of me. However, I quite regularly inflect words and sentences with the wrong tones. What I think a spoken sentence is conveying is quite different from the sentence I actually hear when I speak it. I attribute this to Asberger's Syndrome, but it's not an excuse, it's a handicap to overcome.

This isn't nearly as concise as it was in my head before I started trying to put it into words. What does it all boil down to? I don't think who I am on the inside is really shown on my outside. I think it's something that needs more work... a lot of it. I could list my flaws till the sun came up, but unlike admitting you have weaknesses, telegraphing them to the world is a bad idea. I only hope that the truth lies somewhere in between the good and the bad versions of myself I've depicted here, then at least there would be hope.