Revelations

There are moments in life where you find how others look at you, how they perceive you to be. This is the kind of moment where you find out what you’re actually like in other’s eyes, and not just what you think yourself to be. Now, you’d imagine that such a revelation will come at some kind of climactic instance, with a rising background score (Hans Zimmer would be my preference) and tidal waves of emotion all around. In reality, these moments happen in the most innocuous of interactions.

You’re sitting and talking with colleagues and a chance comment by someone opens a new perspective altogether that you spend days thinking about. A passing remark is what has most often caused me to have the biggest revelations about the image people have of me. Just yesterday, a friend of mine told me something that blew me away. A mutual friend of ours, one I had known since first year of college, apparently disliked me a lot. I had not known this to be the case through 6 years of knowing her and treating her as a friend in every respect. But that one passing remark opened the floodgates of a lot of rewinding the memory tapes. Now, every interaction with her seemed to point to this exact conclusion and I could have kicked myself for not seeing it sooner. She despised me, and I had been a nice person to her for so long for no reason. People are silly this way, if she had a problem, she should have told me and we could have stopped bothering with a meaningless façade of friendship that was one sided and a waste of time.

Another time, a colleague of mine made a passing remark that touched my very core. I was told, more in jest perhaps, that not everything is about me. What my brain processed was — I am a selfish person and I come across as someone who only cares about himself. This was not good. Every conversation and interaction I’d ever had with anyone was now suspect. I suppose there is truth in all of them and I've just never been able to see it on my own. We all think we are a certain way, while people around us may have a radically different opinion.

Another good friend of mine told me, “You’re a handful, you know that right? Yet, we’re still your friends. That shows we love you.” I knew my personality was a bit of an acquired taste, but I felt this was a deeply unfair commentary coming from people who were as much a headache to deal with as they perceived me to be. I don’t need favours from people pretending to be my friends for the sake of some lofty ideal of helping out a socially handicapped guy. I don’t take pity. Everyone is a handful one way or another and if you can’t even be yourself around people who call you their friends, its better to not have any.

What all of this is doing is making me question my personality and sense of self. I am becoming progressively more guarded in dealing with people, trying to school my expressions and speech. I am self policing (very badly for I have no real control) and it’s turning me into some other person entirely. And for what? This streak of people pleasing that I possess is the reason for most of my fear and insecurity. I hasten away from conflict, become very stressed by any negative interaction and worry incessantly about what others think of me. It becomes tied to my own sense of self worth and it is quite unhealthy.

But what then can I do to stop this whole spiral into madness?

I can either stop caring what people think of my actions and do things as I feel them to be right by my moral compass. That sounds like the kind of wisdom this day and age gives to everyone. Whether its right or wrong will be discovered in a couple of decades when people my age become mature enough too see the follies of our past selves. Till then, the advice is as good as any other new age theory. On the other hand, trying to tailor yourself to meet everyone’s expectations is surely a recipe for disaster.

I think I need to wholeheartedly embrace the phrase Hyderabad is famous for:

“Take Light.”

In essence, let it go. I need to let people go from my life. If they think I'm toxic, then better they stay the f**k away from me. That may be too much of arrogance on my part, but it seems to be the best way to deal with this situation. Until I find a more permanent solution.