Big Personality
Sometime around 35, maybe 40, I don't know, I started feeling like the seasons of my life were shifting. Lucky for me, a global pandemic and a recent move to the other side of town were the reset I didn't know I needed. In 2019, I was involved in a social scene that I no longer found fulfilling.
To be honest, it’s taken me several years to write a first post on here that I'm comfortable posting. I wanted to post something genuine, something cool and clever, that spoke to the person I am now. But that's not true at all. If I'm being honest, I’d admit I’m alone a lot, despite having a long-term relationship; he still has friends he sees often.
I set myself up to fail a lot in my 20s. When I moved here, I did so with a built-in group of friends, so I didn't have to put much effort into making my own. I’ve never really had to. Being a malleable people pleaser had served me well, right up until the point it didn’t.
As a teen, I got compared to Stacy from Wayne’s World or Tai from Clueless a lot. And it hadn’t dawned on me that it was because they were naive and easy to manipulate. They just wanted to belong. Two very kind girls whose only downfall was caring too much. My trusting curiosity was always mistaken for incompetence. If I happened to be within a group that included mean girls, they would find a way to use me as their lightning rod, deflecting the heat away from any negative attention on them.
I was a noisy, outgoing, inquisitive kid labeled with a big personality on lots of report cards. The irony that my mom worked with high-functioning special needs kids only occurred to me recently: how she could work so closely with kids who expressed signs of the same things I also had been showing on a higher-functioning, higher-masking level never registered with her? Or maybe it did, and she ignored it. Maybe it was hard to come home to more of that. This is the same woman who told her little social sponge, “The more friends you have, the happier you’ll be,” and I took that extremely literally and ran with it until I figured out it wasn’t to be taken at face value. Not everyone wants to be your friend, let alone like you. Some will even take advantage of your good nature. I was independent enough, though, right?
At a party Junior year, I thought the girlfriends of my boyfriend’s friends were warming up to me and being funny by saying “OMG Brenda why dont you go count cans on the back porch,” and I gleefully said “Ok!” thinking “haha this is going to be hilarious I'm going to organize all the beer cans and create a small pile so there’s beer money for later…” they shut the sliding door behind me, and locked me on the back porch until he realized I wasnt there. I wasn’t popular in high school; I wasn’t unpopular either. I didn’t have a set friend group, and the best friends I thought I had were convenient from scouts or soccer. Needless to say we stopped talking after graduation.
I hated myself. I hated school. My role became that of the friend who developed earlier than 5th grade, so she was bigger than her counterparts, more shapely, more excess than XS. With that, I recognized unwritten rules of hierarchy among friend groups, pillars, and archetypes one must align with for the flock to feel secure in their station. I became the DUFF, the fridge friend, the loud bark if you got too close. And eventually I started to believe that was all I would ever be. Some people ultimately liked me better; I was more liked when I was mean. Boys liked me mean. I was even wittier, more outgoing. Less annoying. If they were laughing, that means they liked me, right? Tenfold if they got a few drinks in me. Then I could fight for them. A personal wrecking ball. “Big personality.”
There have been plenty of times in my life when I’ve fallen into roles that were assigned to me before I could agree to the terms of the part. I’ve never truly felt part of a group outside of forced-proximity ones, like Girl Scouts and soccer, and the thought of being annoying didn't occur to me until late in life, when I realized that people in those groups probably only liked me because they had to. I’m such an asshole. I was a phenom on the field and a model member of my troop, but I was insufferable.
In the Summer of 2003, I moved high-tailed it to Portland. I literally wrote my boyfriend Chris a “Dear Chris” letter and left while he was at sea. I’m an asshole. He was planning to marry me when he got back, and that scared me off. I looked down the barrel of my 21 years of life and didn’t want to be a statistic. I quickly moved in with friends from Yahoo. A website where we had barely had any photos of each other. Risky for 2003, but being me, I was more scared of the person I’d become if I didn’t leave. But the friends I already had when I got here belonged to my roommate, and eventually his friend whom I started dating. They all went to school together. Eventually, other friend groups blended to create my core group. I had my Yahoo friends, and eventually friends I made at Adobe. We’re not extremely close but close enough that if something happened and I needed a place in a pinch to stay, he’d take me in, type of roots.
By 2005 I was bringing my camera everywhere, which was an advantage. For everyone and for me. It was my conversation starter, something I could be proud of, something to give me substance. “See, I bring worth other than a loud mouth.” Around the same time, I was cast in the matronly role as den mother, a Wendy with her very own lost boys. Colloquially known as Mama B, I kept my chicks close to my bosom, fiercely protective of the life I had built on the back of yet another boyfriend. After that, I assumed I no longer had genuine friends. Dating someone in a popular local band and having a somewhat lucrative photo career made it hard to tell who actually wanted to be your friend and who just wanted proximity to the band, your apartment, to you, your art.
Eventually I learned the hard way it was the latter. Eventually that advantage morphed into something taken for granted. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy documenting experiences, but I was never in any of the photos. I have decades of my life in photos, and I’m in a handful of them. I suppose that’s the common curse among those who felt like disappearing into the background of their life so desperately that it eventually happens. But that's a post for another time.
I feel like I’ve been chasing the high of when entire chat rooms would explode with excitement when I logged on. There was a certain high in being popular online before social media. I like to joke about peaking in high school, because I think I really did, online. I was more popular online in 1999 than I ever have been in my entire life up to this point. And I don’t think many people can relate to that feeling.
I don’t want to digress into The Crucible of 2008, it’s a worthy post in its own right, too. In the meantime, I’ll just link this playlist instead. 2008 broke my heart and my head. In fact, it’s the heart of this post, but I’m not there yet to articulate the tailspin that shit put me through.
Let's fast-forward to 2017; that’s when I finally started taking care of myself.
The first step was to talk to an outside source; luckily for me, telehealth was huge due to COVID, so being able to duck into a room or private space to speak with a therapist without even having to look one in the eye was life-changing. What do you mean I can just call someone and talk through my bullshit? What do you mean I can just dip into this little phone booth at work and yammer on, having my feelings validated? Fucking refreshing. I was told I was right in that phone booth. Many times. That sometimes it’s ok to hang it up and not look back. Once I was able to work remotely from an actual house we owned, things changed drastically. Almost overnight.
At that point in my life, I still had a few loose ends I needed to gather, for better or for worse. The easier way was to start implementing the tools I was taught. One was distancing myself from drama or people who only wanted to use me as a sounding board- people who never took any interest in me or what I was doing, with no natural curiosity to ever create or explore. Funny enough, it didn't take long for those loose ends to be buried in the ground. They’ve been quiet ever since I moved.
Others are just the natural progression of relationships. We all grow and branch out, build and create community elsewhere.
Recently I went to a show celebrating 20 years since that beloved local band had hit the scene. They announced it 6 months before the show. That gave my apprehensive ass plenty of time to fret and worry about who would be there and whether things would be really awkward, given how things were left as we all aged out of each other’s existence. It was a weird vibe, I won’t lie. I think a lot of people thought my sister was me, so their initial excitement was spent already, so when they finally saw me, they didn’t really have a whole lot to say. I didn't take my camera on purpose, either; that could have been part of it. Though, 20/20 hindsight, I should have, because I would have had the best photos. In fact, there is a lot I would have done differently that evening. It felt like Tom Sawyer's funeral; you know that scene? When Tom and the friends are watching the town think they’re dead? Like you’re there but not? I don’t know. It felt like a life that was no longer mine or one that I was part of anymore. I looked over at one point and saw a friend who, up until that evening, I was sure was stoked to hang with me, but who spent most of the night with friends I’ve only learned about through lore. I wish more people there had been as excited to see me as I was to see them, but that evening allowed me some context, a little peek behind the curtain, and I think I am resolved in my conclusions.
The rest of the weekend had me reflecting pretty hard about how far I’ve come, or at least how comfortable I have become in just doing whatever it is I’m doing alone these days. Alone as in, like, I don't have a group chat or a friend group I solely rely on. In fact, my therapist recognized early in my treatment that I had a penchant for attracting and being attracted to broken loners who are going through it with their own friend(s). I knew exactly what she meant, but hearing her call it out was mortifying. I play fixer until they patch things up and I am no longer useful. Brender the Mender.
Sometimes they feel guilty and want to keep including me, but the other party usually opposes it. I never knew the other friend was always mad at me because I was accidentally a better friend than them; I made them look bad by comparison because I was such a desperate pleaser. I would give you the moon to be my friend, and that never sat right with the original party’s established BFF. So they would exploit my goodness or only include me in surface-level invites. Which, let’s face it, in recent years have been few and far between, and even then it’s like.. I don’t know, it’s hard for me to talk about because I want to be included so badly in plans and things, but not because I was an afterthought, you know… like, “OH, you saw my post…shit…you can come to if you want; we are meeting at XYZ time.”
No thank you. I wasn't part of the OG plans, so I don't want to be a spare. That type of shit. I’m better at recognizing people’s intent now than I was about a decade ago. I know now when I’m wanted.
I’m in my 40s, and it still happens. I think there’s a misconception that because I have been with my BF for 16 years, we have, like, bedtimes and things we do as a couple. Which, yeah… But I also have 100% autonomy; I’m not married, have kids, or have any fucks. I can still be feral. But you know, I live in the suburbs where, like… People assume I live on the cusp of the ends of the Earth or something. And before anyone bitches “You wouldn't go anyway even if you were invited anywhere.” You’re right, but being invited still makes me feel included, even if it’s not genuine and they know I won’t show up. You never know.
That’s why knowing me online seems easier; I’m easier to know on purpose here. I have never had a reason to hide my personality online because it has always been welcome. But for whatever reason, it doesn’t translate offline, even though I’m the same person.
As social media makes it easier and more permissible for people to be armchair therapists and complete bullshitters, I have found that starting this blog is probably a good thing. There’s a lot of interference out there, so keeping my opinion in one place helps. Bluesky is boring. Twitter has fallen. And I don't exactly feel right expressing words on Tumblr unless I link it. But I dunno. I used to be so open in my journaling. Things are shitty, and though my morale is hopeful, I could really use a win.
Dolly Parton died today.
