College life is hard. There is this constant feeling that the songs you listen to understand you more than your peers. But at the same time, you don’t really understand yourself either.
Recently, I have been dealing with an internal struggle, wondering why nobody knows anything about me, and wondering where the strange impressions of me are coming from. I could not quite pinpoint the reasons people got such a wrong idea of who I was. But it’s is beginning to make sense to me now.
I do not know myself. My personality is performative, and I live to entertain. There are no defining terms of my personality because I do not share myself with others. I question and I joke and nothing more.
Who am I? That is a question I am not sure I will ever be able to answer. I know what I like: plants, books, movies, music. I know that I can hold an intellectual conversation, but I also know that I never do. I am caught up in entertaining people, knowing just what jokes and expressions to make that will make them love me. When it doesn’t work, I know what songs I will cry to in my car.
I know that I do not know how to share all of these things with my peers. I feel too different from them, although I do not believe I am unique nor do I think this feeling or my words are. But when I sit in a room full of people my age, I know I feel like the odd one out.
We all live in our own heads and the person we are in there is not the person we always present, whether you agree with this or not, you must admit there are some things you would never tell another soul.
For this reason, I spend a lot of time trying to get to know other people. What is your favorite color? Where do you spend your summers? What was the most defining moment of your childhood? And no, I can not tell you what most of my peers are studying at school. But I can tell you their favorite gum flavors, the band they want most to see in concert, and the names of their best friends.
People often find these questions strange or uncomfortable, but I see the corners of their mouths lift a little when I remember their answers later. However, I do not wish for people to remember these things about me, I don’t want them to know the answers. I only want them to know how perceptive I am, to know that I notice.
And so, maybe I am quite OK with people not knowing who I am or what I like. Maybe all I am to others is perceptive and attentive. And maybe that is OK.