Recently I was with a friend who found out something about me to which she was shocked to hear — the fact that I have once traveled outside the country. It wasn’t anything secret, but it made me realize that there are some things I prefer not to share (not that this was one of those things). Upon further analysis I’ve determined that I just don’t like to share too many of my emotions with others.
The thing about giving away my life experiences (and accompanying emotional perspective) to people is that it grants them the power of manipulation over my feelings. I specifically observe this with my female friends. To prove a point or win an argument, most girls I know will distort one of your life experiences as a way to show your flaws and subsequently invalidate your arguments.
An example of this is a girl saying to me “You don’t know what commitment is! How could you possibly know? You’re a virgin so you’ve barely even come close to haivng a relationship.” In this example, a female friend is attempting to utilize one of my supposed embarassments to try and keep my voice of reason quiet. Of course being a virgin has little to do with the general argument of committment, but the goal was to win the argument by shaming/hurting you into submission.
In fact, Na’im Lynn, a comedian and one of Kevin Hart’s entourage, reiterates this point perfectly. In one of his standup routines he talks about how women use personal attacks to win arguments. They break you down mentally until you no longer feel good about yourself, leaving you with not even the will to fight the original argument you were participating in. I don’t want to make a sweeping generalization of the whole gender but I will say that I’ve experienced this in a lot of my own interactions with those of the opposite sex.
Anyway, back to the question of “Who am I.” Let’s use a collection of words to help in my self description:
angry
joker
unsatisfied
loving
passionate
stern
…I think any more elaboration of who I am can be inferred from my blog posts, but maybe one day I’ll give an actual perspective of who I am from the perspective of me.