not trying to put on a mask
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Mar 2015
Posts: 133
not trying to put on a mask
i've been trying to figure out why i feel different posting here. like, when i'm writing here and typing out stuff and i feel like i sound like a complete moron and that people are rolling their eyes at me and i'm coming across as a gigantic goofball who pretty much does nothing but whine about his problems and ramble drunk and generally slur across the keyboard with the same amount of grace and intellect as a stoned monkey... and that despite that i'm still posting and i don't ******* care enough that i hit the backspace... that i don't mind that you guys are seeing me in such a state,,,
because one of the reasons i enjoy being online so much is that i can manufacture a mask... not to manipulate anyone, or be mean - i don't do that- but it makes me feel better about me when i'm sharp and on it and protecting myself behind a computer screen and thinking super hard about everything i say so there's no way that the people i speak to will ever be able to see any part of me that might be real and vulnerable or might have any kind of flaw or shortcoming, that i'm not this immense figure of superhuman intellect and skilled writing.
it's a relief to just smash the keys and spew everything here, i mean i'm getting anxiety and keep shoving my head in my hands like wtf are you talking about laz, but it's like... it's ok, it's okay to be built of stuff that buckles and is kind of grubby and dirty and maybe useless and not everyone's favourite flavour, it's literally the first time i've just ... not ******* tried to be anything out of insecurity. so even if you're a bit fed up with me, and if you're not... or anyone who gets that sense of feeling like you're wasting everyone's time by spouting off about all the endless mess you're in, just keep talking. maybe i feel like i'm beneath everyone here and that's why it's okay to be an ugly noise... i don't know. even if that is the case, i'm grateful to be able to just blurt it.
because one of the reasons i enjoy being online so much is that i can manufacture a mask... not to manipulate anyone, or be mean - i don't do that- but it makes me feel better about me when i'm sharp and on it and protecting myself behind a computer screen and thinking super hard about everything i say so there's no way that the people i speak to will ever be able to see any part of me that might be real and vulnerable or might have any kind of flaw or shortcoming, that i'm not this immense figure of superhuman intellect and skilled writing.
it's a relief to just smash the keys and spew everything here, i mean i'm getting anxiety and keep shoving my head in my hands like wtf are you talking about laz, but it's like... it's ok, it's okay to be built of stuff that buckles and is kind of grubby and dirty and maybe useless and not everyone's favourite flavour, it's literally the first time i've just ... not ******* tried to be anything out of insecurity. so even if you're a bit fed up with me, and if you're not... or anyone who gets that sense of feeling like you're wasting everyone's time by spouting off about all the endless mess you're in, just keep talking. maybe i feel like i'm beneath everyone here and that's why it's okay to be an ugly noise... i don't know. even if that is the case, i'm grateful to be able to just blurt it.
Member
Join Date: Jun 2012
Posts: 5,229
beneath everyone? haha yeah right. I know i'm just as much of a mess at times etc..
When i first sobered up i was running out of ears that would listen to me ramble on. it scared me that i'd have no friends to tolrate my wining and confusion etc..
people here dont really get tired of you. But i myself still hold back. sometimes I wanna open a thread and get some advice but I know the answers already then I think maybe is hould just vent get it off my chest but I still hold back some. But in the end if you gotta get it out you gotta get it out.
People here can offer some really great advice some stuff we dont wanna hear some stuff we didnt think of some realy useful tidbits etc..
I could post about my job issues again i bet i'd be told that hey we've been down this road with you and someone would probably reserect one of my old threads and i'd need to see that.
Its helpful.
When i first sobered up i was running out of ears that would listen to me ramble on. it scared me that i'd have no friends to tolrate my wining and confusion etc..
people here dont really get tired of you. But i myself still hold back. sometimes I wanna open a thread and get some advice but I know the answers already then I think maybe is hould just vent get it off my chest but I still hold back some. But in the end if you gotta get it out you gotta get it out.
People here can offer some really great advice some stuff we dont wanna hear some stuff we didnt think of some realy useful tidbits etc..
I could post about my job issues again i bet i'd be told that hey we've been down this road with you and someone would probably reserect one of my old threads and i'd need to see that.
Its helpful.
Member
Join Date: Jul 2010
Posts: 10,912
A lot of that sounds like anxiety and insecurity, lycanlaz. The great thing about SR is that it's probably less judgmental than anywhere else where we can seek help, and our identity is irrelevant to being able to use all this constructively. I am quite certain that probably most of us who post regularly feel that way sometimes, that it might have been better not to say certain things. If we never felt that way and were 100% comfortable all the time, I think that would be much worse... it would mean that we have no sense of responsibility.
I also think that many people love the internet exactly for what you said. Can say whatever but no need to face it directly, and no need to react to stuff immediately. I think it's only a problem if it makes you withdraw from real life and interaction to an extent that is bothering you.
Being vulnerable openly is not easy for anyone but most of us benefit from it in many ways. This is why we have this message board
I also think that many people love the internet exactly for what you said. Can say whatever but no need to face it directly, and no need to react to stuff immediately. I think it's only a problem if it makes you withdraw from real life and interaction to an extent that is bothering you.
Being vulnerable openly is not easy for anyone but most of us benefit from it in many ways. This is why we have this message board
Sober Alcoholic
Join Date: Aug 2011
Posts: 3,539
I really like your OP laz. There is a certain honesty to it that I appreciate. That same honesty will serve you well in sobriety.
Your post reminds me of an experience I had many years ago (long before I got sober). I had a relative who had recently exited detox. and was asked by his treatment providers to have a relative accompany him to an AA meeting. So.... I went at his request, not because I had a problem (ya right). Well that meeting left me with quite an impression. I was struck by the unrelenting honesty with which the group talked about their problems with alcohol. There was more concentrated honesty and vulnerability expressed in that 1 hour than I had ever experienced from any group of individuals in my entire life.
Eventually I came to appreciate both my own imperfections as well as the imperfections of others. Often it's the crack that lets the light in.
Keep up the good work.
Your post reminds me of an experience I had many years ago (long before I got sober). I had a relative who had recently exited detox. and was asked by his treatment providers to have a relative accompany him to an AA meeting. So.... I went at his request, not because I had a problem (ya right). Well that meeting left me with quite an impression. I was struck by the unrelenting honesty with which the group talked about their problems with alcohol. There was more concentrated honesty and vulnerability expressed in that 1 hour than I had ever experienced from any group of individuals in my entire life.
Eventually I came to appreciate both my own imperfections as well as the imperfections of others. Often it's the crack that lets the light in.
Keep up the good work.
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Mar 2015
Posts: 133
zjw - why not open a thread like that? like, speaking for myself, any one of you could start a thread about any topic at all and i'd feel like it was totally justified if you felt like you needed some input and not for one second would i feel like it was wasting my time. maybe it's again that feeling like i'm on the bottom of everything right now... the only way to go is up, and everyone else even those in the worst **** seem somewhere further up. that's illusory i know; we're all in the same boat... perhaps that's why i feel like i can just throw it all out. even so... i don't want to do that any more; i don't want to hold anything back, and maybe that's selfish.... maybe spewing everything and not stopping even when i feel like the subject or the content isn't worth your time, but i figure that feeling is all my own reservation - i can only speak as someone who's been a member for barely a few minutes but i want to lay it all out, every thought, every concern, i want to learn how to throw myself out without compromising my emotional safety and find a strength within being able to talk about everything and feeling legitimate even if it's something that appears peripherally as unimportant or redundant as job concerns that maybe you or i or anyone has gone over a hundred times... because my reservations for not saying it would only be that i figure everyone else doesn't want to have to deal with it, and isn't it okay to state worry or fear or mild concern or stress? why hold some back? there's an epidemic of expectation that comes especially with online interaction that lauds reticence and personal censorship but why - that expectation is stifling and doesn't allow anyone room to just... be... and breathe...
if they've already been down that road with you isn't it okay to walk down there again? i wouldn't mind. i want to go down those roads and if someone needs to retrace their steps i'll do the same with them because i hope that maybe if i'm backtracking someone would be patient enough to count it out with me...
haennie; you're right, it is anxiety and insecurity, i've been struggling with severe issues around this for a long time. my experience with people pretending to be friends has always resulted in being betrayed or mocked or rejected, so where i can be an edifice of adamant strength and solidity, i've clung to it, overexaggerated it... been someone i want to be but that isn't entirely true to me. frankly i don't think there's anything wrong with that - we can choose to behave and be whoever we want, i guess, if that makes us happy... it does make me feel good, knowing people i respect, respect me in the same way, for a reason and traits that i've actively chosen to emulate... but for me it's massively about self hate, about avoiding myself and pretending and hiding, rather than bolstering an essential part of myself, and the only person that's damaging is me. i want to find out how to be this and be alive within that and expressing myself totally without shame or fear and it being me absolutely without the veil of all these masks i can wear... and i know everyone does that, its a human thing, acting... we do that as a psychological, subconscious default - we can't help it, all the ways we learn to present ourselves based on familial and social experience.... but i want to, for me, bring that down and fearlessly live and without diminishing myself in the face of imagined expectation from external sources... be able to just.... yeah just be.
awuh - yeah, i've missed that honesty, and not known what it was i was issing, but i guess it's the illusion that other people can literally damage you. of course they can and they do and they have, they've absolutely destroyed me... but maybe i had to be, and from there maybe i can learn how to fling myself around, truly, without the threat of someone else's influence shaking my constitution. someone posted a thread about kintsugi... was it dee? the beauty of broken things, remade in gold and silver, and how the cracks only enhance the aesthetic of the piece, because broken things are stronger and set off the light in ways that they could never do whole... i reached a place of strength a couple of years ago where it was almost like that, but i was so walled off that even though i was confident, it lacked this honesty that i want to maintain. without the chase for being something other than absolute expression of self and loving that, no second guessing, no rereading or backspacing or editing... i deserve that. for no one else but me, accepting it. and knowing that's damn well okay.
if they've already been down that road with you isn't it okay to walk down there again? i wouldn't mind. i want to go down those roads and if someone needs to retrace their steps i'll do the same with them because i hope that maybe if i'm backtracking someone would be patient enough to count it out with me...
haennie; you're right, it is anxiety and insecurity, i've been struggling with severe issues around this for a long time. my experience with people pretending to be friends has always resulted in being betrayed or mocked or rejected, so where i can be an edifice of adamant strength and solidity, i've clung to it, overexaggerated it... been someone i want to be but that isn't entirely true to me. frankly i don't think there's anything wrong with that - we can choose to behave and be whoever we want, i guess, if that makes us happy... it does make me feel good, knowing people i respect, respect me in the same way, for a reason and traits that i've actively chosen to emulate... but for me it's massively about self hate, about avoiding myself and pretending and hiding, rather than bolstering an essential part of myself, and the only person that's damaging is me. i want to find out how to be this and be alive within that and expressing myself totally without shame or fear and it being me absolutely without the veil of all these masks i can wear... and i know everyone does that, its a human thing, acting... we do that as a psychological, subconscious default - we can't help it, all the ways we learn to present ourselves based on familial and social experience.... but i want to, for me, bring that down and fearlessly live and without diminishing myself in the face of imagined expectation from external sources... be able to just.... yeah just be.
awuh - yeah, i've missed that honesty, and not known what it was i was issing, but i guess it's the illusion that other people can literally damage you. of course they can and they do and they have, they've absolutely destroyed me... but maybe i had to be, and from there maybe i can learn how to fling myself around, truly, without the threat of someone else's influence shaking my constitution. someone posted a thread about kintsugi... was it dee? the beauty of broken things, remade in gold and silver, and how the cracks only enhance the aesthetic of the piece, because broken things are stronger and set off the light in ways that they could never do whole... i reached a place of strength a couple of years ago where it was almost like that, but i was so walled off that even though i was confident, it lacked this honesty that i want to maintain. without the chase for being something other than absolute expression of self and loving that, no second guessing, no rereading or backspacing or editing... i deserve that. for no one else but me, accepting it. and knowing that's damn well okay.
Currently Active Users Viewing this Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
