encased

I was looking through a list of famous people that share my personality type the other day and ended up choosing a couple to watch interviews of. It was pretty interesting. Some of them felt off but some resonated. It can be an overall way of perceiving and communicating that stands out but often it's subtle things in the mannerisms, tone or even just the eyes that strike me as uncannily familiar.

One of them was a kpop idol. Some things that repeatedly stood out were the comments by those around him and his fans that they found him to be beautiful and an overall perfect guy. An interesting video I came across though was one in which he was talking to a married couple and started crying hard at the mention of having someone who's really on your side to share even your ugly sides with. The rest of his group were shocked at his reaction, saying how he always seemed strong and didn't open up much. He brought up his own surprise at his reaction and briefly mentioned wanting someone like that to talk to but that he found it difficult.

It was a situation I felt I could relate to. Despite having plenty of friends and people offering support and more, I've spent most of my life feeling the same way. And watching him suddenly curl into himself and cry very hard, very briefly and very alone(ly) while everyone watched from a distance felt familiar as well, at least as a visual reflection of how it can be. It was compelling to see such a raw and fleeting display of loneliness in someone surrounded by thousands of people extending support and love to him at all times (or more precisely, to their idea/impression of him).

Though I come nowhere near this guy in terms of my own qualities or talents, I could see the same emotional and psychological distance in my own life combined with the social effects of being considered attractive, charming and useful. I wondered if he too sacrificed his emotional and psychological reality to become a person who was always striving to meet the needs and expectations of others by being as pleasing and effective as possible.

There was a period a couple years back when I was basically maximizing my capacities in similar ways, though luckily on a much smaller scale. As a result I was soon making more friends than I knew what to do with and generally extending into what I thought at the time to be a kind of emergence. While it did bring a lot of validation, company and opportunities, it also came with steep costs. One of them being that regularly getting complimented on how I looked, performed and made others feel eventually started to feel more painful than gratifying. Rather than increasing genuine self-confidence it gradually exposed and deepened an underlying belief that if I didn't continue to measure up to expectations, I'd be nothing, have nothing and no one would care about me. This led to increasing dependence on external validation to ward off anxiety.

Cultivating these standards also consumed a lot of energy and made it harder to trust the intentions of others. I can't imagine how it feels for him because even at my comparatively miniscule level I was noticing how many people essentially wanted to possess and use me for various ends. It became increasingly difficult for me to feel like I even had the room to express sides of myself or do things that might disappoint others because of the projections and expectations I was receiving and holding myself to.

He probably didn't have anyone in his life that he really felt free to let his guard down with. And probably like me, the challenges in doing so started in early childhood. He probably hasn't even fully opened up to himself yet, especially if he hasn't had the breakdown that I believe he inevitably will. He's younger than me so if he does it could be coming soon, though he's also under way more public pressure so it would also probably be messier. Hopefully if it comes he survives it to start the process of breaking out of the beautiful shell he's encased himself in.

I wonder who he might turn out to be? What's he really like behind the lovely screen he's projecting? Not just the pretty sides but the sides he's afraid to show? Who's really in there?

I continue to wonder the same about myself. It can be surprisingly hard to find time to get to know myself in between all the ways that I distract or otherwise busy myself. It'll be even harder for him with all that he has to do and lose.