Mamarati

I told you it was coming together… all those pieces of me.

OK, so I was going through some old entries, and as I read it, I thought… wow.

WOW.

I sound like I was completely nuts. I mean, chock full o’. It was during some of the depression phase and some of the postpartum phase… the divorce was finalizing. I was embarking on a new era in my life. And I ain’t talkin’ ’bout no laundry detergent. My adoptive mom had died and I was finally getting around to dealing with some of that.

But really, you would have thought that I was standing in my kitchen with a razor blade at my throat, ready to bid the world farewell.

And that is my problem. That is the problem I’ve been having since I left the behind-the-scenes world of working on the Internet and moved into more of a public position dealing with a topic that many times leaves little room for imperfection. And so it’s been hard for me to express myself. The parts of me that aren’t perfect. The parts of me that are severely flawed.

In truth, I’m very OK with all those parts of myself, and in the last 5 or so years I’ve really started to embrace all those parts of everyone else. But I’m not OK with judgy people coming along and… well, sometimes I have a thin skin. Less so professionally, and more so personally. But you know, when both pieces of you are out there on the Internet, people will get mad at the professional you and start dragging the personal stuff in. I’ve never wanted that, but you know what… if it happens, so be it.

Because I’m tired of not being able to play around with all my random thoughts and emotions in the chock full o’ nuts way that I always have. Those of you who have known me for a long time, read me for a long time have seen bits and pieces of this journey. Me working out my childhood and my pain and all the mistakes of my youth and all the experiments in life and know that when I say something it’s just me arguing with myself or trying to convince myself of something one way or the other.

(“A major concern for INTPs is the haunting sense of impending failure. They spend considerable time second-guessing themselves. The open-endedness (from Perceiving) conjoined with the need for competence (NT) is expressed in a sense that one’s conclusion may well be met by an equally plausible alternative solution, and that, after all, one may very well have overlooked some critical bit of data. An INTP arguing a point may very well be trying to convince himself as much as his opposition.”)

I’ve talked about it before… that everything I write here in my personal sphere, all this emotional hemming and hawing is like trying on bathing suits. Does this one fit? What about this one? How does this make me look? I’m not sure… Let me try on another. I thought I liked this one, but now I hate it.

And this is just how I am. This is how I operate. And when I put it together with my personality… INTP people are like a slim 1 percent of the world or so. Not only do we do things differently, but most people don’t ever really witness the way we interact with the world. You’re used to the way you do it or your other ESTJ or ENFP buddies. Which is fine, just don’t rag on my way of doing things because I’m in the minority. Let me have my storm inside and my calm outside.

So, that was some of my epiphany. Just that I’m afraid that my smooshy interior will be exposed… The funniest thing, truly, is that this part of me is not the most genuine part of me. It’s not the most representative. And yet, it is. I am the sum of my parts and this is just one of them. That’s what I’m saying.

And so I guess that’s what it’s taking to make me feel like continuing to write out the personal side of me.

There is no anonymity any more, is there? I guess when you grew up on the Internet and it was like that starting out… the transparency is hard to get used to. People used to come online to be someone else, and really, more and more people are just being themselves.

It’s hard for me to do that, but it’s all I’ve wanted to do since I got here.