I wanted to call this, "A funny thing happened on the way to Openness." A little clumsy perhaps, but kind of expresses what I'm about today. What I'm thinking about is how my quest to be more open to others and be able to understand what's going on on "over there" in my relationships. And, I guess, to understand people better in general. Though, when I started, I was only thinking about how closed off I was and I figured that if I could do something about that, I would have more friends. I mean, everybody around me all seemed to have friends and be having a good time, so there should be something to all that, right?
So I worked for years to be more functional in society. To me that meant getting over my fears and my obsessive need to protect myself. I picture myself then surrounded by a clumsy red brick wall, built from the inside, so I can be safe from all the vicissitudes that life might throw at me. The wall is sloppy with the bricks all crooked and mortar oozing out from all the joints, and it's such a mess that are lots of gaps when stuff can leak through. That's me, kind of a mess.
It's odd that openness is where I was heading, for I never really thought about it that way. I just wanted to stop being so afraid. To stop all the second guessing and self recriminations that ruled all my social interactions. And to find a way to not be so lonely. At the time I couldn't have any friends and I didn't really understand why. Now I see that I trusted people so little that I had to wear a thick facade when I dealt with anyone. I had to try so hard to be..., you know, I don't know what I was trying to be. But whatever it was, it was hard and left me drained and with a headache, if it wen't on too long. In essence, I really had no idea what I was doing when I set out to change, I just didn't want to pretend any more.
Time goes by and slowly I ratcheted down the fears and self-doubts. The two seem to go hand in hand, you can't really make progress on one without improving the other as well. Here's an interesting thing I've noticed, lack of self-doubt doesn't imply self confidence. Nor does having self confidence mean you have no doubts. They are related but not inverses of each other. On my journey, I found it much easier to deal with the doubts and fears first, and let the confidence grow with experience. I have always been uncomfortable with positive affirmations of confidence that ignore my fears and doubts. Your milage may vary.
At some point, I notice that the fears have dissipated significantly and I was able to raise my head and look around a bit. Sort of like I'd begun to take down my brick wall. Not all of it, but down to chest high, say. I relaxed a lot in dealing with other people and thought, this is cool! But, you know what? Nothing changed. I'd pulled down my wall and nobody attacked me, but nobody came to me either. In fact, nobody seemed to notice. That just didn't seem right.
"Maybe I don't quite get it yet," I thought. So I kept on doing what I was doing. Time goes by and I slowing pull down the wall a bit further and become it bit more adventurous. Now the wall is down to about waist high and I can reach out to other people. Now things get even more odd. People who I thought were "safe" are now treating me a bit odd and seem somewhat uncomfortable around me. Others get hostile, in a passive-agressve way, at my change in behavior. In a way, it's like I was standing, naked, in the middle of a crowd of friends and family and most of them don't seem to even notice.
At one point I start doing theater again, after twenty-odd years, and, suddenly everything was different. None of the people I met doing shows had ever known me before. They had no preconceived ideas of what I was supposed to be and no stake in me being one way or another. Then the lightbulb went on! People who have known you forever will always treat you as who they think you are, not who you actually are. This is the way most people work, I think, they form an impression when they meet you and, from then on, that's who you are. If you change, well, then you are still "you," but acting different, sometimes. Some will never see you change. Some see it and will try to convince you that it's "wrong" and work to to get you back to "normal." And others will move away from you. If you're lucky, you will have some enlightened friends or family that will see your changes as progress and will rejoice with you. I didn't have any of those type of friends. So around family I tend to "put my light under a bushel" to keep the peace, for it really doesn't make any difference anyway.
If I ever truly manage to pull my wall down all the way to the ground, I am going to need a whole new batch of friends. Ones that I can relate to and who can understand who I am now and where I'm going. I am not a fixed point. So, if you're going to be my friend, you need to accept and rejoice in the fact that while my height and eye color will be as they are, everything else is subject to change without notice.
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