Be Yourself

CW: mental health and many associated things

"Be Yourself."

Which self?

Am I supposed to be the angry monster barking at the world for not getting what it wants, that craves affection but bites at any hand that tries to pet it?

Am I the gnawing feeling of futility that sees any success and wants only to make everyone feel as miserable as me? Am I the whimpering puppy constantly exposing its belly for fear that my desire for independence will only be met with a swift bite to my snout? Do I entertain the fantasy that I'm a happy creator who is just pleased as punch to see more art exist in the world, when those feelings are so fleeting and rare? When you have problems with acceptance or finding a social group, you hear the expression "be yourself," all the time. What others don't realize is that you might not have a clue who that self is. I'm not okay. I'm not mentally healthy. I'm not nuerotypical. The world doesn't know how to respond to me, but I'm supposed to be myself? Why? So that I can just expose the ugliest parts of myself and watch as any support I've fawned into existence gets blown away? No, being myself is social suicide. I have a lifetime of experience to tell me that talking without a filter is such a bad idea that carrying through with it is lunacy. I am not what they want me to be. I am something different. I'm bitter and scarred and warped and snarling. I am less of a person than the flattest characters to be found on a page. My motivations are comparable to Lovecraftian horrors. My reactions are alien. If you know what I am unfiltered, then you will only come to the worst conclusions about my morality, ethics, and even my basic humanity and I'm in no position to argue otherwise. Because I have no reason to believe I'm anything but a terrible selfish monster who does nothing but ruin the life and thoughts of everything around me. I've seen what being myself does and I can't understate the looks of confusion and disgust I've evoked from my fellow human beings.

And they will tell me about how their lives have improved after "accepting who they are." How nice of you to have a personality and objectives that meshes so well with the human psyche. I don't have that fucking luxury! I can only wear a mask of skin that I've carved off the beautiful and successful. The digits at the end of my appendages twist up the edges of those lips, or tilt the slits that were once eyes to approximate that thing called a smile. Yet, there is no love for that mask of gore, nor the creature that props it upon its face. Humans inherently know what one of their own look like and I am not one of them.

You can be yourself because you were afraid of angering a few people. I can't because I've already tried it. I can't because I know how revolting my psyche is. The depth of my rage and the deep trenches of self loathing in my psyche are so covered in filth that humans would vomit just from being downwind. Asking me to "be yourself" is inviting me to grab a kind person and yank them into those pits of arrogant misanthropy. And they won't feel a compulsion to hold me and tell me that I'm okay. No. That's a fiction healthy people tell themselves, so that they can believe that there aren't any problems they can't fix. The truth is that those exposed to the darkest parts of my mind can only despair and mutter, "have you thought about going to therapy?" They don't know what it's like to see that same expression in the eyes of professionals. For that look isn't born out of an altruistic desire to help others. No. That expression, that response, comes from a haunting realization that there are some who are beyond help. That institutions exist not to rehabilitate the inhuman, but to sequester them away from the eyes of society. Because help is a fantasy for those so broken. They do not belong and everyone knows it's true. I can't be myself because I don't belong in the human race. *** These are the kind of thoughts that enter my head when people tell me "be yourself." My rational mind knows that these thoughts aren't healthy, but I don't believe that. When I hear those words I know that I'm supposed to smile and say, "I'm trying," or something like that. The truth is that I don't know who I am or even which parts of me are worth showing to the public. I know that I need to accept that others will dislike and even hate me, but I can't move forward. Keep talking about games or movies or books and pray that I don't let my darkness seep out. That's the best that I can do to coexist with humanity because when I show the reflection of my iceberg on the surface of the moonlit ocean, people recoil back and despair. They're not ready for the tip of the iceberg and they cannot fathom how deep those jutting spikes of ice reach into the depths.