2001-04-11 - 12:36 a.m.
#41: No Need for Double Identities
Note to self: Small children should not be allowed on buses unless they are restrained in a small, sound impermeable bubble with hair trigger sensitive explosives attached to their ankles. That's all I have to say on the matter.
Well another AAC anime night come and gone, and what an unusually successful night it was! Lots of people today, which was surprising.... But maybe not considering it's the school holidays and all. I managed to drag along another friend from university this time round for the proceedings, who even tagged along to the after meeting local cafe hit (well, he didn't exactly have much of a choice. he needed to either get a lift from my mother or from another person from the club who I'd have to negotiate a ride for). The cafe, for those of you wgo don't know, is where we discuss matters of great importance for the club: like extra planned meetings beyond the norm, the clubs foreseeable future, and how to crush our enemies with megalomaniacal glee. And other miscellaneous small talk too, which I enjoy quite a bit when in these little get togethers.
But despite the fact that it was Josh's birthday (lotsa birthdays this time of year.... Weird) and during the holiday period, no less; my friend from university and I had to leave quite early. Mostly because my mother had to pick us up (and it couldn't be too late) but also because I really wasn't having that much fun, and neither was my friend for that matter. I guess the contents of the groups candid discussions kinda scared him away a little; and I felt a little uncomfortable getting into such a conversation with him around. Plus, the group at the cafe was astonishingly small considering the spectacular numbers (okay, 30 people) who turned up for the meeting.
Anyway, so here I am: Home early on one of the few AAC meetings in which I could have just stayed out late and not face the repercussion of an early morning lecture the next day. Kinda sucks. Dropped my friend off back at his place and did not dare mention about the meeting I had planned at my place during the weekend. Didn't want the same kind of brittle, uncomfortable atmosphere for the very first meeting at my house; which isn't fair to him since it's not his fault that I'm so uptight and conscious of my marked different behaviour.... but I'm weak when it comes to these matters. One of my cousins is coming to the meeting but she thinks of me as crazy in any case, so I should be relatively okay there.
Kinda weird isn't it? I'm not entirely sure if other people do this, but I have groups of friends that I would NEVER try to introduce to one another. If I do try, it'd probably end up a bit like what happened to those certain university friends of mine when I brought them along to the AAC. In that case, I thought the common ground of anime would somehow be enough to bridge them together (hey, it worked for me!) but somehow it didn't work out that way. I guess I was expecting a bit too much. You know the old saying about how one should keep social and business aspects of ones life seperate? Well here, I'm keeping my social and social aspects of my life seperate. Only one social is different from the other social, cause they don't really seem to go well together.
In a way, I'm leading a double, triple, maybe even a quadruple (or more!) life. Multiple lives, along with multiple personalities. Heck, I'm even writing this in a tone that would be agreeable with those from the AAC and FLAVA (amd maybe AGFF). If people like my relatives or my friends at the University ever discover this diary, they probably wouldn't be able to guess from the writing alone that it was me. So I write this diary like I would a speech to a bunch of friends: A private message to THEM, but not to me, or to others who aren't part of that circle of friends.
I mean, who apart from those in AGFF would know about "sock with a half-brick in it grand mastery technique" and stuff like GFS or TMIG? Or FLAVA about the magic three words that always crack me up when recited in order: x-ray fish, pootie and shampoop? Or AAC about a host of things which prove that I am not only clumsy as heck but a pervert to boot? And the list goes on. People from these groups are my friends and they are all seperated by the emotional walls I have erected in my mind; never to interact with one another for fear of exposing my duality.
Is it right to keep all my friends seperate like this? Am I being selfish by not wanting them to meet new people that I know? Am I seriously comprimising my mental health by keeping these walls rigidly in place, those that define my behaviour depending upon the social pool I happen to be dipping my big toe into? Who am I then, if nothing more than a figment of your imagination? I, the person that you see when we meet, am defined by you. I am those things that you have gathered about me from my general behaviour. To be anything else than that is to not be the Edwyn that you know.
Or is this kind of behaviour actually considered normal? That keeping certain friends, certain lives and certain personalities apart is considered something that we all do? If so, I wonder what kind of life do you lead when I'm not there? Oh sure, I may ask and you may answer, but you'll answer in such a way so as to maintain the view that I have of you; just as I would answer any such questions you would ask. How do you live when you're by yourself and no one is there to observe you? Who are you really, when you are all alone? Who am I? Is all that I am based upon who sees me and how they do so? Do I have more than that? When people ask me to, can I ever be "myself"?
Bah.
Rambling. Anyway, if I was really so desperate to solve this problem, I'd reccomend we all come together and have sex. I mean the benefits for me would be obvious (wink, wink) but also if we use THAT solution, we'd all be able to get intimate with one another and in a relatively short time too. And if you think that solution is pretty screwed up, blame Ben Afflecks character in Chasing Amy for suggesting it as a way to solve intimacy problems. I'm not sure how he managed to arrive at such a conclusion, but it seemed pretty logical when he explained it.
Well. Time to sign off for the night, I think.
