Self-Absorbed

"We should be actors," said the Boy Without a Nickname, hurrying in my wake, which is something I suspect he does rather a lot of. A leaf in search of a current, is the Nicknameless, still in that phase of life some go through in which one tries to find oneself by seeking out the loudest voice in the room and limpeting onto it. I recognize this phase, of course, as I went through it many a time myself before realizing that there were some perks allowed the loudest voice in the room that the sidekicks are never permitted to see.

Self-actualization, for one.
But I digress.

I shook my head at him. "Tried it. No dice."
"But you're so good."

We had been reading a play out loud in English Composition II. I had taken part in the reading and enjoyed myself thoroughly, before realizing that other people in the class were enjoying themselves more by their own participation and cheerfully allowing my role to be swiped out from under me.

I do damn near everything cheerfully in EngCompII. I find it deeply irritates the half of the class who despise me for reasons that remain shrouded in the mists of my incomprehension. I am just immature enough to take their annoyed huffs and whispers every time I open my mouth as motivation to grin and continue doing so.

I have developed the terrible habit of growing belligerently happy in the face of personal hatred. Probably this attitude is going to get me beat up one of these days.

Nicknameless was right, incidentally. I am good at read-throughs. I generally have a pretty decent idea for how a thing is supposed to be delivered, being as I am so completely obsessed with dialogue that my thought patterns take on the form of conversations.

However. "Good at delivery. Not so much staying in character."
"What do you mean?"  The thing I can't help but admire in the Nicknameless is how utterly willing he is to give everyone around him feedlines like "What do you mean?" or "I don't understand, can you explain?" He will make someone an excellent sidekick (if he hasn't already) and someday, because he's so damn good at actually caring about what people say, he will either grow incredibly embittered...or turn into a really fantastic human being. I'm tempted to watch the metamorphosis, but I'd be far more tempted to meddle. He doesn't need my meddling to become what he's going to become.

Besides, I'm not in the market for yet another unevenly-balanced relationship.

"I'm always," I tried to verbalize the nebulous thing that makes it impossible for me to be an actress or, for that matter, remain a sidekick. "Always me-delivering-lines. I'm never, you know, Lady Macbeth. I'm Me-Delivering-Lady-Macbeth's-Lines. So if anything happens onstage that shouldn't...say the scene where she's trying to convince Macbeth to go kill the king, yeah?"

He nodded happily. I suspect he had no idea what I was talking about. "And say, Macbeth trips and falls flat on his face. What would Lady Macbeth do?" He looked at me blankly, so I helped him out. "She'd get pissed, probably, yank him to his feet, carry on telling him to nail his courage to the sticking point. But me, I'm nervous about the audience and pratfalls are funny, so I laugh."
"Oh, no."
"Right. I've made directors cry." This is true. "Just not cut out for it," I concluded, and the conversation moved on to his own aspirations of bright lights and being somebody else.

There was a guy I dated in high school who told me once that I was very uncomplicated. "What you see is what you get," he declared, and it wasn't until years later that I worked out that he hadn't meant it as a compliment. The phrase was correctly applied, even if his interpretation had been wildly off; he had meant to imply that I was stupid and lacking in depth, an assessment I now feel fairly confident in disagreeing with.

Virulently. Vehemently. Violently, even, and on a good day, viciously.

But he was right. When it comes to me, what you see is what you get. For all that I take to lies like a fish to water, there is an inherent honesty to my nature that can't seem to ever remain repressed for long. I simply do not have the capability to be anything but myself, neuroses and loud voice and obnoxious habits and all.

This has caused me no end of trouble throughout my life, never more so than when I was very young and believed there to be no advantages whatsoever to being Susie. In my defense, I think it safe to venture to say that this coincided with the part of my life when there actually were no discernable advantages to being Susie.  The belief, however, stuck around for a disgustingly lengthy period of time, long past the point when it stopped being true.

There was a time I'd have happily thrown anyone to the wolves if I thought it would allow me to be something else. I'm not proud of this. Keep in mind, before you judge, that I had to throw Susie to the metaphorical slavering beasties in the dark first.

She took one look at them, muttered "Fuck that," and retreated to the back of my mind, where she bided her time and sharpened her Spiky Yo-yo of +8 ADHD.

And always, always, always she would re-emerge, usually sooner rather than later, whooping and dancing and using big words to talk too much about things she had no business knowing, growling at the beasties and inviting them to play, snorting scornfully at my attempts to shut her the hell up.

It was really quite difficult on one's social status, having what the Meerkat calls a Skitchgirl occasionally pop out, surprise! of what could only be called a backstabbery doormat.  It certainly didn't help that when it came to being a backstabbery doormat, I was hopelessly incompetent. I couldn't be-a-bitch my way out of a paper bag, you see, except on special occasions. Too nice, as the Insomniac likes to tell me after I've befriended the most lost-puppy person on the bus, only to blink in surprise when in response they start bus-stalking me.

I can pretend to be someone else. I'm just no bloody good at it.

Eventually, I learned to accept her. Eventually, in fact, I learned to glory in her, in no small part due to the various and sundry people who raised their eyebrows at me in a manner decidedly sarcastic and informed me that actually, they found they infinitely preferred Susie to...whatever it was I had been trying to masquerade as. And they continue to do so on the sprinkled days when I wake up wanting to apologize for who and what I am.

Life without apologies is ever so very much more pleasant when you have what I do now.

...thanks for that, by the way, Assorted Criminal Element. And the Poked Bear, of course, but the only reason I'm specially mentioning him is because he'll get annoyed if I don't. With good reason. He knows full well what he's done, and who my first book is going to be dedicated to, and who, of course, my life will be spent with.

...yes, sometimes I feel badly for him, too.

I feel the need to add a disclaimer. I'm not saying I'm perfect; anyone who knows me knows I keep a full catalogue of my flaws, each checked off very neatly and thoroughly explained, and I stand no chance of forgetting them anytime soon. Assorted Criminal Elements and Bears are not deluded, and they wish for me to lack delusion, as well; they are perfectly willing to tell me each and every time I'm off being an idiot, no matter how frequently this sort of thing occurs (very). I say and do stupid things with a regularity that is positively stunning. "Life without apologies" is in fact a misleading phrase, as I apologize quite often, usually after I've done or said one of those stunningly stupid things. I'm messy and easily distracted, and to judge by the length of this post, I'm astonishingly self-absorbed.

But I am me. And that is a thing I shall likely never lose again.

Never think me lacking in gratitude for that fact.