Growing up, I was a different version of myself around basically everyone.
Around my parents friends, I was quiet and polite.
Around my friends, I was loud, weird, and wrestling with them.
Around my girlfriend, I even lied about myself just so we could seem more similar.
For years, I never really questioned it.
Until eventually I started wondering:
Which version of me was actually real?
My parents tell me:
Alex, we have some friends coming over for dinner.
and immediately I say okay… but then just go to my room and lock myself in.
Damn, now I have to eat dinner when they’re gone. I don’t want to go down and meet new people.
So I start playing games… and a while later I hear the front door open…
I continue playing my video games, hopefully I can survive until I can eat alone.
…
It’s been many hours and my stomach…
RUMBLE
Damn… I want to eat…
But if I go downstairs, I will have to greet them all… and my parents probably told them to that I was a little bit shy…
I don’t like talking to people, I know when I go down there I will have to talk.
…
I hear laughter and loud talking as I descend the stairs, I already know what will be said…
Ah there he is! Finally came out of his room! Welcome.
Yeah… finally came out of my room.
I try to be polite and just smile and say hello to everyone…
I just want to eat. But now I know they will probably ask a million questions about my life…
but I really don’t want to talk, I barely know all the answers to my life myself…
Yeah Alex, so what do you want to become?
Uhh yeah I think I want to do computer engineering…
Then she tells my mother:
Wow, you have such a smart kid!
Good, now they think I’m smart and I’m talking a lot too…
…
The conversations with all the guests were always fine…
Yet, the next time we had guests over…
I would hide in my room and do the same thing over and over…
…
The weird thing was…
I was completely okay telling myself:
I’m shy.
That was just who I was.
But I hated other people actually seeing me that way.
So I would spend hours hiding upstairs…
then finally come downstairs and try to prove I wasn’t the shy kid I had just spent the entire evening being.
I’m with my friends in school… we have a break between classes…
I start to grab my friends and wrestle with them, as always.
I say weird stuff and scream, but we’re all laughing…
but then they say:
Alex, you’re so weird haha.
…
Most of the time I just took it as a joke. But somehow today, I just wanted to be normal. I was always the weirdest kid so why don’t I do it.
The next break comes…
I’m with my friends and we’re just staring at our phones…
No wrestling…
No funny jokes…
No banter…
…
And the next day, I completely forget to be normal…
I’m back to just wrestling and being an expressive kid…
and my friends would call me weird every once in a while. And the cycle would repeat itself.
But which version of myself was really me?
With my friends, I could only keep the “normal” version of myself alive for a few hours.
With my girlfriend…
I took it much further.
My girlfriend sees a YouTube short…
it’s a couple riding together on a motorbike…
Wow, you see this Alex! Couple goals.
…
Normally I would just laugh it off with her… but maybe, maybe I can tell her that we can do that…
that I once rode on a motorbike with my father…
Yeah, we should do that too! I rode with my father, we should ride together one day!
and immediately I regret the words coming out of my mouth.
I don’t want to ride a motorbike, I never even rode with my father.
Wait, you really want to Alex! Wow I’m so excited!
…
Oh okay, wow she actually is so excited now!
Okay, maybe I should just try to become interested in bikes, I mean I could become someone to ride motorbikes…
…
A few weeks later me and her are looking at motorbike equipment…
I try on helmets, and gloves and all the kinds…
Hmm yeah, this fits me I guess…
I look over to my girlfriend…
Oh my god Alex! this helmet is so cute!
Look at these gloves!
Wow I know exactly what this is!
I’ve never seen her as excited as when she’s dreaming about these things…
I really have to become someone to ride with her…
…
My girlfriend asks me:
Alex, did you really ride with your father?
And I say:
Yes yes I did as a child yeah…
But when I asked my father…
No, we’ve never ridden before on the motorbike
Why did I ask my father? I knew it was a lie.
So I told my girlfriend…
Ah, maybe it was with someone else. I’ve never ridden with my father…
Wait, so you lied?
Oh no no, I think I forgot, but yeah I’ve ridden on a motorbike before…
…
And even when she caught me…
my brain found a technicality.
I had ridden a motorbike once when I was maybe ten.
So now I could tell myself:
See? I didn’t really lie.
…
I did.
I told her I rode with my father because I wanted us to have something in common.
And instead of admitting that, I kept changing the story so I could still feel like I was being honest.
…
My girlfriend of course gets annoyed…
and then I eventually say…
Yeah I don’t know… I will try to ride a motorbike but if I don’t like it then sorry but I can’t ride with you as a couple.
And she says:
I understand, we don’t need to have the same interests and all. You do whatever you feel like.
Wait…
She was completely fine with the version of me I was trying so hard to hide.
Okay…
I land in South Africa with my father and for the first time…
I’m really in a place on the opposite side of the world, nobody knows me…
nobody cares who I am. I will just enjoy this vacation…
So I meet a few people working at an ice cream stand…
They look happy and open. Let me try to say something outside of my ice cream order…
Hello, such a lovely country you have here!
I just wanted to say something nice…
…
but eventually I was just enjoying talking so much to the ladies there…
that I forgot completely that I was supposed to swim at the lagoon.
I tell them:
Oh it was so nice talking!
And eventually go down to swim…
…
The rest of the trip I went from keeping my head down most of the time to making eye contact first, like the people here…
and just talking about life…
…
My father calls my mother:
Yeah, Alex is just so talkative! He is really enjoying it here!
I agree with him, I really do like talking to everyone.
People were starting to smile the moment I came up to them.
I’ve never had that before…
and by the end I had talked more in a few weeks of my vacation…
than a few years back at home.
…
I’m walking to the gym…
I walk past people, and I look them in the eye and smile.
For the first time, I notice some of them looking back and saying
Hello!
Wow, I used to only keep my head down and never even bothered to look up and see if anyone here wanted to talk…
The world hadn’t suddenly become friendlier.
I had finally started giving it something to respond to.
Looking back…
I spent years trying to figure out which version of me was the real one.
The quiet kid around my parents friends.
The weird kid wrestling with his friends.
The boyfriend trying to become interested in something because his girlfriend loved it.
The guy in South Africa talking to strangers for hours.
And I think I was asking the wrong question.
They were all me.
Of course different people bring out different parts of us.
The problem wasn’t that I had different versions of myself.
The problem was how often fear decided which version was allowed to come out.
I was afraid of being seen as shy.
Afraid of being too weird.
Afraid that being different would make people feel less connected to me.
And the more I tried to control how people saw me…
the harder it became for them to actually see me.
South Africa was different.
Nobody there knew who I was supposed to be.
So for once, I wasn’t constantly deciding who I should become before I spoke.
I just talked.
I still act differently around different people.
I think everyone does.
But now I try to notice when I’m changing naturally…
and when I’m changing because I’m afraid of what someone will think.
Because maybe being yourself doesn’t mean acting exactly the same around everyone.
Maybe it means not being afraid of which parts of yourself they get to see.