This seems to describe me when I'm with friends. (tvtropes, how I love thee!)
I've known all along that I always get to be the "nice, quiet, boring one" in my social group. Things are easier that way.
In early days, before things like "puberty", "college", and "grades" became a serious issue, I was more often than not the popular kid, the leader among my group friends. If there was another popular kid in the group, I got to be the outgoing second-in command.
Sometimes I got to be a "cool older sister" when I had little kids to deal with.
Sometimes I was shunned by my elementary classmates - even though that stung, I was always able to find two or three people who liked me and we made our own micro-group... and then I was leader among them.
In the midst of the weird cycle of being popular one year and unpopular the next, I was always able to find friends, and all in all, I had no doubt that my friends liked me and followed me.
Those days were more than a decade ago and does not apply anymore.
New home, new school. False friendships and bullying ensued.
I kept telling myself, it's okay, that was just bad luck, once you get over this it will be fine, I'll be the same again. People will like me and I will be the social ringleader again.
Another new home, another new school. Still the same bullying. Pessimism emerged.
I thought, maybe I should just shut up. If I keep quiet, maybe no one will bother me.
So I did just that.
It worked. No one found fun in bullying a quiet, emotionless person. The bullying decreased. I got so good at it that sometimes they forgot I was even in the same classroom.
I became quiet, serious, barely existent. People didn't bother me. I got my inner peace back.
It worked.
It may have worked a little too well.
New home, new school, new friends. Now was my time to shine. Time to cast off the silent, stoic mask and become the cheerful, bubbly core of the social circle like I always was.
The mask didn't come off. Doubts grew instead.
What if they were only being friends with me out of obligation? What if they secretly don't like me? What if I'm imposing on them? I can't tell if people actually like me anymore.
Solution: stay as the nice, boring girl; nice enough to join in social activities, but distant enough to not be in the "best friend zone". I didn't want to displease anyone. I didn't want to make any trouble.
In retrospect, this was a self-fulfilling prophecy which I still have the urge to kick myself whenever I think about it. Good job making yourself miserable in high school, idiot.
New school, new friends.
To make a long story short, after much trials and tribulations as convoluted as a soap opera, the mask has at least partially come off. I started to remember, "This is what it meant to be friends", "This is what it meant to trust and love." I thought the mask was finally off.
It wasn't.
Lesson to small, impressionable children: if you adopt a persona long enough, it becomes a part of you.
While I am generally content, it irks me that I can never escape from being the nice, boring girl.
During the Chicago trip, we asked questions about each other as a bonding game. I found people I've known for over two years struggling to ask questions to me, finally settling with unproductive general questions such as, "What is your favorite color?" "Do you like dogs or cats?". I am also told that my impression to the kendo people is the goody-goody two shoes girl.
Not even artistic (this is a first), not even any other characteristic. "Just" a good girl.
Worries, doubts. I wonder if I messed up again. I wonder if I am repeating high school with people who I consider friends again.
My mother, ever the affectionate, well-meaning and brutally honest person she is, becomes angry that I'm still whining about my social insecurities at the grand old age of twenty-one.
"Well, what did you expect? You're not the most interesting person in the world, you know. Did you think people would just flock to you?"
"No, but I thought I was friends with-"
"That might be just what *you* think. Perhaps they don't think of you as much of a friend at all, especially if their impression of you is a boring good girl... and you're not even that much of a goody two-shoes."
I may be doing a disservice by making my mom sound like an evil matriarch. I can tell you that she is a very kind person. It's just that she never sugarcoats her words, ever.
She believes kids should know the awful truth as it is instead of beating around the bush, even if it traumatizes the said kids and reduces them to tears.
Pet bird died? No, we didn't send it to the neighbors, honey, it DIED. Want to know where babies come from? Here, have a sex-ed book with PICTURES. Overheard relatives talking badly about my fighting with my brother? Relay what the relatives said, word for word, and say that just because they're family doesn't mean relatives always love you, so you better behave yourself because they'll always look for more things to nitpick about. Family drama? Even family members turn ugly over things like money or school or children. That's how adults are, and that's life.
ANYWAY,
Mom tells me there are two options: one, change your personality because frankly, nobody will like you the way you are ("How did you even get a boyfriend?") or two, just suck it up and cling onto your friends like a leech.
Neither options sound plausible or pleasant to me. And I realize once again, I cannot escape the boring good girl persona, for it has become a permanent part of me.
I don't want to be boring. I don't want to be the person no one particularly cares about.
I don't know where to start.
