Sunday, November 15, 2020

Deep dive into deconstruction

 I was told recently that I have a stoic face.

That I can hide emotion really well. I guess I have never thought about it that way.
I see it as a form of protection. It's something that I have done since high school, being a person that was heavily bullied. I learned to closely guard my emotions. I learned to keep emotion away from my face so no one knew how I felt.

I still do it. I just didn't realize that I did until last night. Maybe that's my problem with talking to people and interacting with them. I see every stranger as a potential threat and I don't open up to them until they open up to me first. And in this world, that usually doesn't happen a lot. I wait for someone to talk to me so I can see that they are not a threat and it's ok for me to open up and talk to them.

It sucks that I've just learned this about myself. So how do I fix this? How do I untrain my brain to be more open? I know it's little steps. But I'm not a snob. If you talk to me. I will talk to you and be warm and considerate. I just need the other person to make the first step and show me that I don't have to consider them a threat, so I stop looking for potential weak spots in them in case they try to hurt me.
It's really no way to live at all. Just imagine, all the potential friends that I've shut out because I saw them as a threat or that I thought they were going to harm or hurt me.

It's very depressing.

So please know though. I am loyal to my friends. To an almost stupid level.
It's just making friends. Making new ones. It's just hard.

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