Masks

Bimbo impression:

Omigosh! I'm meeting with my BBFF((: this Friday! I can't wait I can't wait I can't wait!! I mean, we haven't met in like, a forever kinda thing? I'm like totally excited??!

-End-

A friend of mine once remarked that I seemed to have so many different personas as to almost be a schizo, to which I replied something on the lines of behaving differently around different people. I guess in our lives many of us tend to put on many different masks to adapt to different social circles, so much so that we inadvertently lose our true selves.

"If you cannot recognize the man in the mirror, it is time to step back and see when you stopped being yourself."

It strikes me as to the sheer quantity of persons whom I have been labelled/thought of as in my life: nerd, bookworm, closet mugger, slacker (I like this one), recluse, joker, voyeur (wth), stalker (wth), geek, prude, perv, holy guy, twisted guy, ah beng, know-it-all and the list goes on. Yet amidst all these labels, some self-admitted, I don't find one that is me. 

The inner me, it seems, only comes out when no one is looking. I've always been amused by the thought of how surprised my less-close friends (moreso my coursemates) would be if they saw the way I live my life. Another thought that I like entertaining would be their reaction if they somehow managed to read my thoughts and compare them to the way I speak. I guess it shows in the way I express myself when I write though.

But therein lies some questions worth considering: If you can't be your true self when you are around your friends, then when can you ever be? Or, if you aren't afraid to show your true self to strangers, why are you afraid of showing it to your friends?

Yet these personas form an intrinsic part of most of us. So hi there, I'm Bing Xing to most, Justin to some, and I'm all the other names above. And yet, I am none. So who exactly am I? I know who I am, at least. But there isn't much point in knowing that if I keep presenting only one side of myself when I'm around one group of people.

Perhaps it's time to start throwing these masks away. Oh well, they were getting uncomfortable anyway.