How Am I Myself? #1

Well, I said it was going to be positive, so I guess I'll just focus on a good aspect of me.

I was laying on a couch, thinking about what to write, when I brushed up against a fluffy pink blanket draped over the top of the couch. It's a really comfy blanket, so I pulled it down and felt like falling asleep there, and wondered why I couldn't feel like this when I wanted to go to bed. Most times when I go to bed, my blanket (not the pink one) feels uncomfortable, and I have to fight with it and my pillow to get into a good sleeping spot.

Waking up is another story. I don't know about anyone else, but for all the trouble I have getting comfortable at night, I feel absolutely perfect in the morning. Everything just feels right, and I just want to lay there and bask in that feeling. I really think that should be the other way around, I should want to leave when I need to wake up, and want to stay when I need to sleep.

I feel comfortable in weird places. Another place I feel so comfortable in is when I'm just wearing long pants, no shirt or socks, and I'm about to start working out. It makes me feel like a cowboy, or a kung fu master, depending on the type of fabric the pants are made out of.

One place I don't feel comfortable is with people. I don't feel like I'm a good conversationalist. I worry that my small talk is overly boring and annoying to people. If I ever do get past all of that and I actually start talking on a deeper level with people, then all of the big alarms go off. My stomach starts to turn and my hands and my whole body start to shake and it's a struggle to keep myself calm. Even with people that I love, trust, and respect, the same thing happens. I just don't deal with it well at all, even though I love the feeling of talking to people on a deep level. I can't speak my real mind because I'm always afraid of what other people will think of me, and whether my friends will like me less because of the way I really am, not just the masks I put up so I can pretend to be pretty normal.

This is why I find it highly ironic that one of the things people like most about me, the real me, is that I'm easy to talk to. They say that I set people at ease. People feel like it's easier to be themselves around me.

I went on a religious retreat last semester. That was scary. Three days of faith sharing and heart-to-heart discussion is one of my worst nightmares, and one of my greatest dreams. However, I faced my fears, I opened up, and I let the real me shine out. One of my friends, one of the group leaders, she wrote me a letter at the end of the retreat. In part of it, she was telling me some of the things she admired most about me. One of those things was that the way I act, the things I say, they make me easy to connect to. She told me that without people like me, the other retreatants might have never opened up. That makes me so happy, because I know exactly how it feels to not be able to open up to others.

How am I myself?

I am truly myself when I help make others feel like they can be themselves, their true selves, as well.

And that's the whole truth.