"stop me, won't you, if you've heard this one before?" -ani
so there's this dichotomy of my personality, which i suppose is a fairly common thing to have. its not like a clean break or anything, there's certainly only one of me, mumblings to myself aside.
but there are definitiely at least two distinct sides to the way i see myself, the way i interact with myself - the "inside" me, and the "outside" me. i mean that in a few ways - there's the me that exists inside myself and the me that gets presented to the world. similarly, there's the me that i present to the world when the "world" consists of my room and the people i know - inside - and the me that is presented to the world outside. i have a weird internal elevator ritual, and by the time i'm out the door and in the sunlight, i've consciously dropped every insecurity about my appearance or capabilities.
ironically, there's an easy way to label this change. inside, i'm caitlin; outside, i'm kat.
that wasn't a purposeful distinction that i ever cultivated, but it works fairly accurately. i introduce myself as kat, and the people who've known me the longest nearly all call me caitlin.
it's not as though one of those is the "true" me and the other is some contrivance. i'm just as much one as the other, each is an equally valid part of my personality and myself. and it's not as though there's really any change... it's just which part of my personality i choose to reveal, how much of myself i put into any particular situation. and in the elevator on the way out, i'm choosing to be a person who has self-confidence and a short attention span and a large vocabulary. it doesn't mean that i'm not that person, or that i lose any other part of who i am in the process. ::shrug::
i don't think there are very many people who can honestly say that they behave the same in every situation - different situations demand that we assume different social roles, and i know that i act differently at home with my parents than i do at the coffeeshop with my friends, and for that matter, differently depending on which friends i'm with. i think that's a natural and healthy psychological response to the fact that different relationships involve different interactions.
i think this is just an umbrella bracketing, the first distinction in the branching of what becomes an infinite number of interactions with an infinite number of people and situations.
interesting, though.
so there's this dichotomy of my personality, which i suppose is a fairly common thing to have. its not like a clean break or anything, there's certainly only one of me, mumblings to myself aside.
but there are definitiely at least two distinct sides to the way i see myself, the way i interact with myself - the "inside" me, and the "outside" me. i mean that in a few ways - there's the me that exists inside myself and the me that gets presented to the world. similarly, there's the me that i present to the world when the "world" consists of my room and the people i know - inside - and the me that is presented to the world outside. i have a weird internal elevator ritual, and by the time i'm out the door and in the sunlight, i've consciously dropped every insecurity about my appearance or capabilities.
ironically, there's an easy way to label this change. inside, i'm caitlin; outside, i'm kat.
that wasn't a purposeful distinction that i ever cultivated, but it works fairly accurately. i introduce myself as kat, and the people who've known me the longest nearly all call me caitlin.
it's not as though one of those is the "true" me and the other is some contrivance. i'm just as much one as the other, each is an equally valid part of my personality and myself. and it's not as though there's really any change... it's just which part of my personality i choose to reveal, how much of myself i put into any particular situation. and in the elevator on the way out, i'm choosing to be a person who has self-confidence and a short attention span and a large vocabulary. it doesn't mean that i'm not that person, or that i lose any other part of who i am in the process. ::shrug::
i don't think there are very many people who can honestly say that they behave the same in every situation - different situations demand that we assume different social roles, and i know that i act differently at home with my parents than i do at the coffeeshop with my friends, and for that matter, differently depending on which friends i'm with. i think that's a natural and healthy psychological response to the fact that different relationships involve different interactions.
i think this is just an umbrella bracketing, the first distinction in the branching of what becomes an infinite number of interactions with an infinite number of people and situations.
interesting, though.