I lose myself in other people all the time, particularly within fictional characters. Or maybe I find parts of myself that were unrealized in real me and engrain them into myself. People are a product of two things: habits and traumas. Finding or losing myself in fictional characters constantly builds up like silt along a riverbed and eventually parts of those characters become a part of me. Sometimes, these traits are admirable and courageous. Other times, they are simply traits that I want to have, but are unrealized in reality. For example, after watching a movie and sitting through two or some hours of some fictional character weave through problems and issues and result somewhat resolved in the end leaves me feeling satisfied. I feel like that character for a short amount of time because it feels real to me. But relatively quickly, like most things in life of this nature, it fades and I revert back to my mean self. I can tell myself things, but that doesn’t really mean that I believe them. I can tell myself I believe in God, but words are just words and the core self of my being might say otherwise. But over a long period of time, after constant and continual exposure to such things, I start believing them. I am a product of my habits and visions and feelings and traumas, and I choose what to take in, somewhat like a filtered sponge. Cinema and books are a huge part of my life. Other people make themselves through bigger things — catastrophes for example. The external world shapes you. But for me I take in the small external world as it comes and choose how it shapes me.
Other times, it happens through other people. Real people that I admire or like. I talk to them, I be with them and I take in parts of them. I don’t know if who I am is real or not. I am not dissociative. I just don’t know how I got here or who I am (in totality. I know some sense of how I got here, but not the whole picture). In a sense I know who I am because I’ve been myself for such a long time, but keeping track of all my influences is impossibly difficult. It’s not crazy either, I think this is the nature of most other people as well. I think I take for granted who I am most of the time. But the real issue comes when I don’t know who I am. Understanding how I got here, how my personality was shaped and how I treat other people on an instinctual level gives me power over myself and my emotions.
There is no escape from who I am. I am stuck with it. I could part with it, but then I would be dead, which I don’t want to be because my life is pretty cool. I could try to escape from myself but it wouldn’t lead to any answers. Maybe other people know me better than I do myself — there are some parts of me that I avoid and neglect. I can learn from that. But am I really mostly a product of fictional things? No I’d say not mostly, but partly. Most of who I am was probably engrained in me from an early age, and that clay has been further molded by me feeling things from other people. For example, my first girlfriend. I was impossible to deal with. I never diagnosed myself but I think I was obsessed in an incredibly negative way. And I was a person that I hated — jealous, self loathing and intolerable. Also ecstatic at one given point and flipped 180 and in deep depression the next moment. I don’t think I was bipolar because I am different now, but the mood swings were incredibly severe. After that relationship, I saw myself retrospectively and saw what an asshole I was. But that’s not me, I hate those characteristics when I see them in other people. But unfortunately I have to accept it because that was who I was. I learned from it, dissociated myself forcibly from those parts of myself and created a new me: better, more emotionally equipped and more positive. I don’t think it’s fake either, I think everyone does it in life. You look back and cringe at past parts of yourself as if that person wasn’t you — because it feels so different. But it is you, obviously. Time doesn’t switch out identities at certain increments of your life. I became who I am because of my experiences, but more so how I retroactively saw my past self. Now I hate those characteristics that I was so much, and I can't see myself acting in that manner again. In short, I grew.
Speaking of past relationships, I think that when I am invested in something/one are the moments where I feel most emotional range. I often question if that’s who I really am, because in a position with close people I becomes less self conscious. In a position when I am totally not self-conscious I feel liberated, but also very different. My freedom feels like a pleasure. It’s like I am free from myself. It’s ironic because when I am alone, it’s different than being with people I am not self conscious with. It’s as if I need other people to validate my experience and who I am. If I was the last person on earth, I wonder how I would act. If there was nobody to validate who I am as wrong, right, insightful, silly, brilliant, stupid, then how would I act?
How did I get here? My instinct and emotions run fast than I can think. Clearly, I can’t keep but it would be more comfortable if I didn’t have to. I guess that’s the benefit of knowing yourself (unless you are naturally a good person).
It’s nice to meet people and really engage with them. There are walls people put up in order to not get hurt. I do it all the time. I felt the past the negative effects of recklessly engage with a person on a too high emotional level. I’m sure other people have felt the same way about me. But it’s nice because it’s good sometimes. I say things all the time but I wonder if I mean them. If I say them enough times, will I eventually those things? It might because those habits might become engrain my personality. But I want to know who I am on a very raw level. In a sense I desire change in order to know who I am.
I think I find other people interesting for either two reasons: 1. because they are fascinating 2. because they are similar. It’s very self consumed in nature, but fascinating people are so different from me that I can learn from them, and other times people are super similar and I can learn from myself from that. I think some people are both but often somewhere between the two extremes. However, I’d like to believe that other people are just awesome and I like to talk or be with them just for that reason. Not anything to do with myself.
That’s what I want. I want to be more compassionate. I get sick of myself relating everything back to me, because I know there is so much more that matters outside of me. But being in my own head, it’s hard to see that.
Currently I see my negative traits as such: lack of compassion, condescending, arrogant, self consumed, often not genuine. But to varying degrees. It’s something that I am aware of and constantly trying to change. I see my positive traits as: creative, insightful, loyal, good to people (I try), focused, and deliberate. All in all, most of my negative traits seem to be coming from some area of being too consumed with myself. Changing myself will come through habits or traumas, and because I can’t crontol traumas, I have to habituate that into myself. I don’t know how. Maybe if I keep telling myself for a long enough time, then I’ll start to really believe it. Not really, I think it comes on a day to day basis on how I treat other people. The reactions that I give to people might be awkward and strange to me at first, but once I habituate them in my personality, then I’ll become more compassionate. I think.
