For my 30th birthday this year, my friend Ashley visited me and we went to a Renaissance fair. While there, Ashley treated me to a palm/tarot card reading. You should understand I'm a very skeptical person. In the court system, everyone is innocent until proven guilty. In the mind of Roxie, everyone is false until proven accurate. The psychic recognized this. Her first descriptions of me were "stubborn" and "guarded." These assumptions are fair, but I did listen. Over the past 6 months, I have thought about that moment under a tent with my hand open in this lady's hand quite a lot actually.
As she said, "You could meet someone special this year..." I truly had to force myself not to roll my eyes. She saw an absence of a ring and told me what she thinks single people want to hear. I don't need to meet anyone. I have lots of amazing people in my life. But how she finished the sentence is what made me soften. "...but only if you can be your authentic self. Not the selves you transform yourself into based on what you think others want you to be."
I've always been an exceptional liar. My parents can attest to how often I would spin an excuse to keep myself out of trouble. I never lie because I want to be deceptive. I lie in order to have the "right answer." Whenever anyone asks me a question, my first response is to think, "What answer do they want from me?" I often feign interest in subjects I know the other person is interested in. I complain about things that don't even bother me because I know it bothers the other person and I want them to feel camaraderie Sometimes this impulse gets out of control. I once told my chiropractor that my favorite restaurant was a place I had literally never stepped into, only because I remembered him mentioning it at a previous appointment.
As I've grown older, I've realized that I easily mold into different personas depending on who I am around. Sometimes this chameleon-like behavior has helped me discover new passions. I wanted to fit in with people in my dorm during my freshman year of college, so I became a football fan, pretending to understand until I truly did. Now, football season brings me great joy each year. I absolutely hated beer, but a friend in college loved craft beer and I wanted to be around him, so I forced myself to buy the drinks he suggested. Then, I fell in love with one and continue to seek out new beers to this day.
Other times, my pretending causes me great anxiety. That automatic response of, "Oh yeah, I completely agree" has led to me really beating up on myself. I don't actually believe that exercising every day or drinking protein shakes makes me a better person, but I've expressed my enthusiastic support for it so many times, I sometimes start to hate myself each time I sit on the couch after work. I don't think I need to pay off all my loans as quickly as possible or buy a house or seek a promotion, but the more I express support for other people in these endeavors, the more I question myself.
As I sat in that wam tent on that weekend 6 months ago, the term "authentic self" kind of hit me in the face. Have I lost that self? Can I define who I really am and not the self I pretend to be in front my family or friends or coworkers? Do I know what is really important to me? What makes me an individual? My friend Sarah tells me often that I say, "I'm fine with anything" too often. She's probably right. I try so hard to "go with the flow." Maybe if I expressed what I want or don't want more often, I would meet the "special person" the psychic referred to. I remain skeptical. However, I will continue to reflect on this idea of "myself." I don't want to lose that person.
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