there came a moment in my youth when I was preparing to #lie to someone and was stressing out about them not believing it and getting mad at me because I knew I was going to look shifty the whole time, but then it occurred to me that I knew all my tells because they were things that momentarily made my anxiety go down (turning my body away from them a little, looking at the floor, using excessive filler words, over-explaining, etc.), and since I could feel what they all were I could just. not do them. and suddenly it felt like I had stopped existing as a single unified being with my feelings and body inherently interconnected and instead was able to use my body like a very sophisticated tool that responds to precise instructions and only does what I actively tell it to. which made me very good at lying and garnered me a few student acting awards, but also led to some other problems of various natures further down the line. alas.
a side effect of this is that every so often, when someone around me is upset to the point of tears and I'm trying to help them, I'll get a sudden violent pang of envy that they're even capable of doing that at all. they don't have to go through the endless drop down menus of "am I feeling something?" -> "what am I feeling?" -> "how would I express it?" -> "would now be the right time and place to express it?" -> "now? do I do it now? right here right now? what happens if 'the person who never cries' bursts into tears?", it just happens for them all at once, no middlemen. expressing a real emotion often feels exactly the same as lying because I have to put exactly the same amount of active effort into both of them, and sometimes all the little choices that go into Looking Upset make it feel like a whole production, like an artificial performance, so I mostly never do it. which, though I would never let this come out of my mouth because I'm aware that it's wildly unfair, also sometimes turns up in my most uncharitable thoughts when other people are upset. a little "cmon mate, this is a bit much," at the back of my head. "I don't ever do this, so why don't you put in the same effort?"
