i was talking to someone the other day and they told me that i was the most closed off person they'd ever met and that they don't understand how i got to be this way and that it must just hurt to be me. i had no response, still don't really. i'm just me. it doesn't hurt. i don't know anything else. i normally don't spend much time thinking about it. then a few days later i was telling someone about applying for the antartica trip. they looked at me funny and said that most people they'd blow off when they said that, but that they thought it'd actually be a pretty good fit for me. that i was very internalized, that i could work well with a team or a group and not screw up group dynamics but that they'd known me for years and still didn't feel like they knew me.
i still have no idea what to think of either of those comments. when i was a kid we moved around alot. my parents were very careful with their money and i spent time in a private catholic school and a private college prep school with kids from wealthy families. i was a part asian kid in really small towns that hadn't seen alot of other asian kids. not a terribly traumatic childhood, but early on i found it was much more comfortable inside my own head, be it just watching movies that i wrote, directed and produced on the insides of my eyelids or reading books. in my early teen/before the driver's license years my parents moved into a house in the middle of nowhere. not a farm, just a house with the nearest neighbors a ways down the road. that lead to tons of time spent walking around in the woods doing whatever.
i was always one of the "doesn't meet full potential" kids. always in advanced classes, but never getting a's. this bothered my dad, so i would spend the time in between reports cards on restriction. restriction meant no t.v./radio/computer. just me'n'the books.
i can remember coming home in the third or fourth grade and being frustrated by social interactions at school. no sad or hurt, but just frustrated, so much so that while trying to explain it to my dad i started crying. he was really great and comforting to me. then he went out and talked to mom and said stuff about me. i don't remember what, and as an adult with an adult's comprehension, it was probably nothing bad. probably just called me "sensitive" or something. but at the time i took it as betrayal and his compassion as acting. i tried hard to never cry again.
in dating i frequently attracted the broken birds. people who'd been raped/abused/molested. i still don't know why. i'm sure the first couple people i dated i was just giddy and open and like any other goofy teen. but handling some of those bigger problems really made me careful of what i say. definately minefield walking. i came to not rely on relationships for happiness or fulfillment.
do all of those things and a little genetic makeup come together to make me "closed off"? who knows. do these people give me a little too much credit for being "complex" or 3-d? i think i'm a fairly flat, 2-d guy. are they looking for something that just isn't there?
the weird part is that i think i'm a little too open. i frequently feel like i bore people at work or wherever with my stories. i do this blogging thing, but it's really written for me to just sort stuff out and get it down. i love the feedback, and kinda like to ham it up for an audience which i normally wouldn't do as much in person. are "shy" and "closed off" the same thing?
i think people adapt to situations. i'm not talking about faking or lying or anything, but i think most people have different sides that come out depending on who they're with and what kind of environment they are in. is that what happens? a little more open with some people you trust and a little reserved with some you don't on some level?
who knows. it was just something interesting to think about for several hours this weekend when i couldn't sleep. there's probably a... not quite a sequel to this but a tangent post in future.
