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?"
to make this a little more specific to myself and perhaps lose some of the #relatability factor, this is also where some of my problems with substances come from. an illusory quality I got from most of my drugs of choice was that they could delete, like, four of the layers from that drop down menu and bring my feelings flush up against the inside of my face. of course smiling at someone and expressing appreciation is the right thing to do when they do something you like, that feels nice to do and makes the other person happy, too, what a revelation that's been here the whole time and that I'll also 100% lose access to again in a few hours. something I would do quite often was use and then open up my phone recording app and dictate fifteen-minute long audio diaries because what was going on in my head could finally come directly out of my mouth without all the levels of vetting. just a lot of really basic stuff like "this is bugging me and it's stupid that I've been pretending it doesn't, I'm super concerned about this but I really don't need to be, I'm afraid of this so I should just resolve it soon instead of avoiding it" that only got close enough for me to look at after three [redacted] seven [redacted] and two [redacted]. unfortunately this Also led to some other problems of various natures further down the line and was not a sustainable routine </3.
