Inspired by a friends-only post made by a friend. You know who you are. <\/p>\n
As a kid I didn’t have much choice about fitting in. I was damn smart, and compulsively honest. I ‘learned’, accurately or no, that it didn’t matter what I did, I was still a nerd, and thus the lowest of the low, so I might as well do whatever I wanted to do anyway (mostly, I made a number of exceptions, which should surprise no one =). <\/p>\n
I read books at recess that most kids would never pick up, mythology, fairy tales, choose your own adventures, mostly. They didn’t want me on their team? Fuck sports anyway, waste of a life. (They seemed content to agree with me that swim team didn’t count. Neither did acrosport dance, all year or two of it that I did ;). <\/p>\n
It got kind of extreme in high school, where I started wearing a cloak and carrying all my books around with me everywhere (I made no use of my locker, I’m surprised it didn’t seriously damage my back). <\/p>\n
My last year of high school, I started defusing my angry (hurt) outsider mess. And college pretty much completely reoriented me, but even now, I have trouble taking seriously how what I do, say, like, etc comes across to others. It seems like a pretty minor question. How I see myself as a result of these things is pretty major though. <\/p>\n
For instance, I don’t think I’ve ever left a book behind when I moved. At least, not since leaving for college. It’s part of seeing myself as smart, and relying on that as a cornerstone of my identity. As an illustration, I’ve kept a duplicate copy of a book I’ve had for over a decade and not read so much as a word of in that span. I’m slimming it down for my impending move. No more than 5 standard boxes of books. =) (I think I had 15 or more in my last move).<\/p>\n
I haven’t much worried about my social standing within the gay community. I’ve assumed it’s shit and that nothing I do will change it. It’s sort of liberating in a way. I’ve come to realize it’s also ridiculously inaccurate, but I think I may value the freedom it confers over the warm fuzzy of realizing that I’m not the lowest rung on the ladder. <\/p>\n
Of course, this brings up the question of how I feel about self-delusion, and whether I value having an accurate picture of myself and reality over my easy freedom by concession from status games. <\/p>\n
Maybe letting myself care what others think just opens me up to too much hurt. <\/p>\n
Hrm. …<\/p>\n
Oh, btw, hi, I’m back on the lj habit \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Inspired by a friends-only post made by a friend. You know who you are. As a kid I didn’t have much choice about fitting in. I was damn smart, and compulsively honest. I ‘learned’, accurately or no, that it didn’t matter what I did, I was still a nerd, and thus the lowest of the … Continue reading “Identity questions”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}