A Penny For Your Books

When or how did you realize that how others perceive you is different from your own perceptions?

It wasn’t until I joined the workforce that I realized people perceived me differently than I perceived myself. I was who I believed I was and that was all there was to it. Before this experience, it did not matter if I had only met someone once at a grocery store, they should see me exactly as I saw myself. Obviously this doesn’t make sense if you think critically, but that doesn’t mean it was something I had ever felt the need to analyze in the first place. It’s one of those concepts that is impossible to ignore after the revelation, but difficult to reach initially until you face a situation that deeply reveals this exact misconception. 

I don’t recall the exact words that inspired the thought, but I remember my entire social brain chemistry altering during this point in my life. Someone had asked me a question that to me was so obvious and so integral to who I thought I was as a person, and they were oblivious to this part of me. It was obvious, right? Right? If other people can’t immediately tell these essential and ingrained concepts that my entire being is derived from, then who am I?

It sounds dramatic, but I fully believe that each person has a moment similar to my own experience. One so eye opening that you reconsider how every person in your life has ever observed you. What if your coworker actually finds you annoying and disingenuous? What if the person you walked by at the grocery store will forever remember you as the-girl-who-wore-her-shirt-inside-out? 

These thoughts started out incredibly mortifying. Realizing I was someone truly perceived differently by other people every moment of every day was fabulously exhausting. It took some time, but after a bit it also became one of the most liberating realizations of my life. So what if that coworker finds me annoying? They can tell me if something truly bothers them. So what if in someone’s memory I am only the-girl-who-wore-her-shirt-inside-out? I’m sure that realizing my shirt was inside-out gave them a nice chuckle. Is that such an awful thing?

To be perceived is simply to be alive. Who I am in someone else’s story shouldn’t matter to me. (Disclaimer-as long as you’re not going out of your way to be evil. Please don’t do that.) It is so much more fun to exist in a reality where each person’s incarnation is distinct. Remember that each human is merely living in their own reality, and humans are cute. Being perceived doesn’t have to be the anxiety-inducing monster it often can be-it can be one of the best parts of every day if you let it be.