masking in Each Day

I’ve written about this before. But it keeps showing up in new and unexpected ways.
And hilariously I just left a comment on someone’s entry about knowing myself and not caring about what other people think. Hah.

I am EXHAUSTED after a day of relatively little mental effort workwise. There’s not a lot of visits getting planned in the last 2 weeks of work before a shut down. I went to my boss (the awesome one) and told him about Jinx and asked if I could have next Monday as a “family day” (we have this special type of leave that we can take for bereavement or medical appointments or “anything” family related).

I have this thing where I… get older but just never wiser. Oh wait, that’s not me. ;)

I have this thing where I always feel like no one believes me. Like, ALWAYS. If I call in sick I assume people think I’m faking. If I have some good news or something fortunate happens I assume people think I’m lying. I said to my therapist once that even though I love my green eyes they make me feel bad because I assume that people either think I’m lying about having green eyes, or that I just want to be “special” by having an unusual eye colour. Literally something people can SEE and I feel like they’ll find some way to discount it (in fact, when I mentioned this to Red, literally saying about not being believed she was like, “aren’t your eyes blue?” ~dies inside~)

The thing is, I want to be special. I want to stand out from the crowd (pretty sure my bright red hair is pulling all the weight on this one). I don’t think it’s wrong to want that. And generally the people who love us believe this about us, too. I don’t give a shit if anyone else thinks I’m special. What they think about me is none of my business.

Anyway, just a dash of imposter syndrome in the midst of all the rejection sensitivity.

The thing is, today, if someone was in front of me I was smiling and laughing and the second I stopped having human interaction everything I was holding up inside me fell and the low feelings flooded in.
It is EXHAUSTING.
I think of it like sandbagging (maybe not an entirely relatable simile), where your need to stack the sandbags (internal defenses) to keep the water out (presenting a socially acceptable face) but every time you turn around the walls you’re building collapse. It’s constant, its draining, its completely invisible. And trying to explain this to people makes me feel and sound like a crazy person.

Anyway, so that’s where I’m at today.