My layered self and how friendships shaped me into what I am today

Escaflowne - because it was one of the first animes my friends shared with me

Today, I decided that I’ll just go through the personal layering topic. While usually when I go talk about layers it tends to go on a rage about the layers I have to peel of the dutch people until they trust me enough to open up… this time I’ll actually talk a bit about my own layers. Which when I actually analyze them, there is actually a very long line of them (I'll still rant about everyone's else layers however because I decided that fairness is for pussies).

Everyone has a bit of layering on them. Layers which we use to disguise our insecurities and weaknesses. Most of the times these layers exist because there was a social or an environmental response for them to be created.

And since this is me, I obviously made it in levels with silly names.

So… The first layer you encounter is:

1^st layer - Extremely talkative and outspoken layer: Yeah, if I met you, there is a very very likely possibility that I babbled all my guts and some more. This comes from my extreme shyness towards new people, because for someone like me which is terrible at reading body language, personal bubbles and often facial expressions, when I first encounter people it’s like a white ghost like profile which I want to talk to but I know nothing about and I am both curious and terrified to get to know.

I get more comfortable as I get to know/talk to the person. But most of the times if a person laughs 50% of me calms down right away.

To my closest friends I am still talkative, but I am capable of being in silent with them without noticing it almost, and I will set back to hear them with close attention.

2^nd layer – Nothing extremely bad ever happens or it is taken in a very serious way: This is a layer which I a couple of years ago would say “I am fine layer” until my friends at the time actually got a bit angry, because they could clearly see I was not fine and I was miserable, and yet I couldn’t really open up.

Nowadays, I do open up when I have a bad day, but I do it in either an overdramatic way to make sure the person doesn’t take it too seriously or I just completely omit it. This is because I assume that most people will just not be able to handle my sadness and when this happens I feel a huge distance being created.

To my closest friends, I’ll most of the times send a message “I NEED TO SKYPE NOW” and then just cry over skype, scream, whine and then get the tension out with talking to them. I mean, in all honesty, it is very rare for me to manage to fully take out my pain through chat. I just can’t manage it, words don’t feel as comforting or human as when they are being spoken. Most of the times I fortunately just need to say things outloud to get them through and overcome them, so the skype talk ends up going quite light hearted after a couple of minutes when I start going from crying to laughter (strangely, nothing is easier than to make me cry and laugh at the same time, somehow when I am in the depths of despair everything seems somewhat idiotically funny).

And for last, the 3^rd layer which I feel comfortable in letting out on the internet (there is actually a 4^th layer, but I just would feel to exposed to let it out)

3^rd layer – Is this person going to abandon me or trade me for someone more interesting: Yeah…. How to explain this one... Well, as a kid up until the end of high school I changed friends a lot… since most of the times these “friends” would stay with me 1-2 months until they found someone else to hang around with. I was not a person of friends group (again, very shy) so I would prefer to just be with one person each time… which one can probably guess it made me a very odd kid. So the moment the friend I was at the time would start getting another friend, I would start to get more quiet and I wouldn’t interrupt their talk… so after a couple of days I would be completely excluded from this person life completely.

At the end of my high school years however, I met a group of wonderful people which I am still friends with. While I was a bit shy with them (though the 1^st layer came in handy to talk to them at first), they never excluded me. They made me comfortable within a group (which was something considering that my idea of groups at the time) and slowly I managed to show all the layers and trust them enough to know they wouldn’t leave me for being me. Obviously there was some fights, especially on the 3^rd layer stage, but those fights actually made me realize that if they withstand me being such a bitch, that the “leaving me” nightmare I kept expecting wouldn’t happen.

While it is a bit embarrassing, the fact that one of them said to me once “I never get bored when I am with you, no matter where we are” actually was my turning point to build a bit of confidence in my personality. You know how it is very common for teenagers to have issues with their bodies? Well, I was more or less okay with my body but I was very much convinced that my personality was terrible.

Well, in a manner of fact, my personality is still a bit weird up and doesn’t seem to match the normality standards… But the fact that these people accepted my weirdness and actually appreciated it gave me the munitions and the confidence I needed to accept it as well. Which is why I am now a lot more comfortable within my skin and I actually like being me… well, not only that but I also wouldn’t trade my own personality for anything… I mean, I would get so bored without myself around and wouldn’t enjoy 70% of the scenery/terrible puns around me as much as I do.

And well, they also paved the pathway for me to trust others and open up to all my other friendships. And yes, I admit, I am lame to the point of considering all my friendships as my beloved tiny presents of fate. I am unable to not to be grateful for having them and not to consider myself extremely lucky for it. That’s why even when I am busy, I still try to have a bit of time to check up on them, not out of fear that they will abandon me, but because I love them all to the point that I need to do it otherwise its almost as if I am not contributing 1% of the huge amount of positivity they bring in my life.

I mean, in all honesty, they are the reason why I am a bit fearless of most things. Why I give my best at everything and why I am so passionate about what i like. They are the why I fight for everything I want. They are also what gives me strength to accept my fear while fighting with everything I am to reach my goals. They are the reasons why I never quit when I feel that I can become and enjoy becoming friends with someone.

Because I know that in the end, even if I pretty much make an ass of myself, throw my face in the ground and crash completely, they will still love me and be somewhat proud of me... Plus my own standards dictate that if I am gonna aim big and fail, I might as well crash while still trying to reach out for it. 

And well, this post ended up becoming all about how grateful I am to having these people in my life. Well, in a way, my layers stories are also about the people who overcame them, as I only realized they existed when they teared them up.

I think I’ll for last mention the sentence another friend said to me, this one is actually not as old friend as the others I mentioned, but she gained up the exact same importance and it is on the same closeness as any of the others.

“You shouldn't hide yourself so much. I think your true self is quite awesome, so you should let everyone else see it as well.”