Epiphanyville

This post is really mainly for me. You have been warned.

These are some poor things I have just now realized I have made or tried to made myself appear as:

• Shiftless
• Lazy
• Unmotivated
• Unreliable
• Undisciplined
• Unskilled
• Unfriendly
• Uncaring
• Unhygienic
• Unobservant
  
• Unintelligent
• Slow
• Soft
• Fat
• Dull
• Shy
• Invisible
• Impoverished
• Indecisive

I've done this more or less unconsciously, constantly, for at least 30 years. I have to a large degree lost myself in the cover, become these things for real. It's hard to divest myself from their comfortable familiarity after so long.

But why would I do this to myself? Good question, dear reader. The answer is camouflage. Battle strategy. Hypervigilance. Preparations against a possible ambush against imagined enemies. I'd prefer them to underestimate me, you see.

It's the same story since I was seven or eight years old, when I was walking home from school with a big jar of earthworms I had caught and I heard a bike approaching behind me and got it into my head they were coming to run me over and I acted like I heard nothing and waited until the last second and then jumped to the side, making the bike carrying two boys in a big hurry crash into my back and causing us all a great deal of pain, confusion and embarrassment. Well, the embarrassment was just mine.

Apparently I learned nothing from this.

I don't know what made me this paranoid. Probably some trauma happened before I learned to speak with my mother, who would have been the only witness, not noticing anything because it would be something that would not have been special to a neurotypical person. Simple and obvious once you imagine it; the details hardly matter.

What matters is I'm resolved to let go of this hypervigilance crap. I'm going to use all the craft and skill and obsessive resolve and mental flexibility my paranoia has taught me to fight it. Maybe even some basic therapy.