Making sense of making sense

I am a veteran in writing about the things I want to say in obscured language. Almost always, I free myself of the things I want to say by saying them in such a way that only shows the fringes of the idea that I want to communicate. What I write are silhouettes of expression. Mainly, and most probably because I am not ready to admit that what I am about to say is directly referenced by the type of person that I am.

If you had known me as a person or as a persona floating around the vastness of the internet, you may have already imagined a version of me. All of those versions are a type of performance in which I wanted to be perceived. The way I write is inconsistent. In turn, representations of my expressions are varied. I try to avoid any direct connection between me and what I show to other people. This post is just an example of it.

I have always been a social recluse. Oftentimes, I blame it on my high introversion tendencies. Any ounce of attention placed on me weighs heavily on my shoulders. I have developed this type of hyperawareness that borders on controlled paranoia. My every move becomes a calculated risk to immediately gauge and understand the personality of the people around me. Which words or sentence construction will merit the highest social acceptance? How do I navigate these different types of personalities in such a way that fits the vibe while imprinting my identity on other people’s perceptions? Socialization becomes a game to me where I must stealthily slide into other people’s attention without them knowing that I am aware of their attention. This type of defense mechanism suited me for two decades, which has become my default state of socialization. It minimizes my anxiety to be around other people. I consciously mimic social behaviors as if I were a toddler in the mirror stage. It works well in large groups. So I always digress, laugh, and banter at the bare minimum during social interactions.

This tendency has left me in a cycle of seclusion and abrupt appearance. I hide from the world to reconstruct the self that I may have long lost at the cost of interacting with other people. Then, when I resurface to the world, I can only tease the world about who I am because of my secretive nature. I deprived myself of the presence of other people that I have become so full of myself, leaving me hungry to express myself as a mode of self-assertion coupled with a faint tinge of my desire for recognition.

What follows is the birth of my propensity to obscure my own expression. This middle ground of pressure between self-preservation and self-expression denies me of any clarity of communication. In this way, I can say too much without saying anything at all. Everything and nothing simultaneously—an oscillation of identities between appearance and disappearance. The perpetual tension of the self and the unself.

Pessoa was here.