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Crappy facial hair and the nature of identity: a self-indulgent Teto introspection

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Posted

[Thread originally called "A long-winded reason for why I'm doing that no shave November malarkey."]

 

It's not entirely that, or even immediately identifiable as an answer to that, but I touched on that in part of it, and this in general is a lot of chatter I started writing when reading people being miserable about their empty lives on some other forum.

 

No tl;dr because there's no real 'point'.

 

Got me to thinking about how empty my life is and how empty my future seems. Loneliness is what eventually drove me out of university, I decided. And my loneliness wasn't for lack of people around me, but for my highly restrained nature. Most if not all of the time, I choose three routes when talking to people: Jokes, silence, or endlessly asking them questions about whatever they're talking about, like some kind of psychiatrist, just to get them to talk about themselves instead of silence.
 
I don't really have much of a future to look forward to. There's nothing waiting for me in the future to keep me going. I just only really have my continuous efforts to self-improve. I don't have anything to look forward to, but there are at least some things I want; to be happier and more fulfilled, which is probably the same with a lot of people.
 
My best memories are times when I was feeling open around people, so I guess that's really what I need to do; learn to be less restrained and open up to people a bit more. At the moment I subconsciously weigh out everything to decide the risk that it'll come back to me somehow before putting it out there. If there's any actual discernible feeling in anything I put on Facebook, or any weakness that somebody could take advantage of, I usually end up taking it down or worrying about it endlessly until it finally leaves my mind, and I think, "if all I got from that was worry, was there really any point in the first place?" so I convince myself that there's really no point in interacting with people if all I'm going to do is worry about how it's received, and I get no pleasure out of it.
 
Being plain and honest with people is a bit too much of a hurdle for me to tackle right now, what with my poor willpower, so in the meantime I'll just continue thinking of different ways I could try to get over my fear of opening up, and maybe I'll fall on some miracle cure, or shred of wisdom. In the end it might be that continued effort is all I really needed, and one day I say to myself "Why am I wasting my time? It's simple", and off I go, thinking I was a fool for wasting so much time just thinking. But maybe all that thinking was what got me there at all, and not the solutions I came up with.
 
For now I'm going with the abstract idea that by participating in no shave November I'll be taking a social risk which might help me, little by little, build up some sort of identity that I can use to communicate to other people through. Because I feel like if I don't have much of an identity for people to see, I wont feel like opening up to build on it. I'm blank at the moment; controlled and restrained, and so anything I reveal about myself is out of context and I feel like I'd rather it was attached to a predetermined identity before I go revealing anything about myself. So I need some sort of identity, and building that is probably the first step towards opening up.
 
I'm sure plenty people already see me a certain way, and so to them I am someone, but a strange thing is that ever since I cut off all my hair a year ago, I've felt like I'm not really sure who I am, in a sense. I had shifted into long-hair mode in maybe 2009, and ended it in 2012. Back at the start of all that, it was a decision for the sake of self-expression, though I didn't really think of it like that at the time; I just wanted to grow my hair for some reason. I suppose I disconnected from who I was during that time at the point where I decided to cut my hair. It feels really silly to think of my long hair like that, but I guess it really was a major part of my 'image', and the main thing that I had to identify myself.
 
So I dunno what all this comes down to really. I feel like a lot of what I'm thinking right now is just stuff that a lot of people think about when they're younger than I am now, but I'm a total latebloomer in general anyway, so I'm not surprised if I'm getting to this part late. Like recently I've only just noticed how small-minded my thoughts are, and how much I underestimate the intelligence and depth of other people.
 
So yeah I dunno, for abstract reasons I am doing no shave November, which probably wont make any noticeable difference in my life, but maybe I'll see some things and come closer to that time when I sigh and wonder why I thought it was such a big deal.

SilverAlchemic likes this

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Posted

Make sure to try and grow better facial hair than pheo can ever hope to. :>

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Posted

I am not stupid enough to believe I will actually look any good with facial hair. For the most part this is just a thread about the nature of identity, maybe?

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Posted

I'm kind of out of it right now, in a lethargic doldrums kind of lull, but I can understand where it is you're coming from. I know that you're probably frustrated for a lack of the sense of self. I think we all have problems like that eventually. I, too, was self-contained, controlled, altogether too calculated. I didn't worry about it though, because that was my identity. I didn't feel alone because I achieved what I wanted. Sometimes I might be down on myself for believing me to be too disingenuous, that it might undermine others' feelings or our interactions, or that it may be manipulative to calculate what you say to someone to better suit a certain goal. My goals were mostly about wanting connectivity. I wanted to actually feel that the people around me were connected to me, and that we shared something a little deeper than friendship. I still feel that way, but I am absolutely not in the state to return to that. I still don't think I was wrong for it. Social interactions cannot be 100% genuine. Society would collapse.

 

I went a little temporarily insane from stress, scandals, powerlessness, fear, alienation (and possibly hormone imbalances from a drug I was taking to get to sleep at night) and I thought of it at the time as if my identity had come crashing down, that everything I'd worked for had been taken from me, and that I was an empty husk incapable of positivity. I tore away all my feelings for everyone else and was forced to pick the people I had to think of as important in my life, and I've been trying to live for me, rather than for those people. And that's worked. I'm no longer as neurotic. I don't worry what I say to people because I have to think of myself as correct, rather than impartial. I have to be aggressively myself. I think I've changed a lot from a few years ago. My past self might be disgusted at my mindset, how lax I am with my appearance, how withdrawn and evasive I am, and how little I've started to care about other people. I've declared hatred, burned bridges, harbored grudges, forsaken people, and think of some things more rigidly in black-and-white. That was not my identity until recently.

 

But identities change. You have to make sure you know what you want. You have to aggressively be yourself. You want a clear image of who you are, but you have to be ready for that to change in ways you don't expect, because people evolve all the time. We gain new imperfections, fix old problems, and we move ahead. You have to want that. You can't count on you being who you are forever. You have to know which things you want to keep and pitch things you don't. Thinking about it isn't a waste of time. Thinking about it and then not taking the appropriate action is. For all my new flaws and for the problems I've fixed, I've come to think of it as a new start, rather than a ruined image, and I had to decide where to begin.

 

So you've decided to not shave for a month, and that's great. I honestly support you on this.

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Posted

I think there's merit to jumping into things without overthinking them. Instead of asking yourself what it means or what it doesn't mean. Or how it makes you seem or how it doesn't make you seem to others. Just do what feels right :D


I feel like the best personal growth decisions don't make much sense to others. And that's fine

Ammonsa likes this

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For all my talk about wanting to expose myself to judgement, this whole thing seems like mass-justification for doing something that I want to do; coming up with some important background for doing something I'm worried will make me look dumb. Making up reasons so that I can convince myself and other people that "I don't really care about it", so that I can emotionally separate myself from it with logic, so that if it does turn out to be embarrassing in the end, I can just tell myself "It was just an experiment" and quietly back off.

 

So none of this is actually my reason at all. I just want to look more manly, but because that's shallow and I'd be self conscious of that reason, and hurt if people ridiculed me, I come up with a stronger reason to protect myself when and if that happens.

 

So this quicker paragraph or two here is a better, simpler, more honest reason. The OP thought pattern is my confused overthinking, trying to preemptively set up barriers to protect myself from ridicule. I'm not so deep as all that. I guess I'm using no shave November as an opportunity to grow it out, using the event as an excuse, and wanting to try growing it out just to try and look more grown up, so I can feel more comfortable acting more grown up. Simple as.

SilverAlchemic likes this

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Posted (edited)

That's cool that you recognized that. I mean there was nothing wrong with your original post. But it's interesting that you analyze yourself like that.

If I may say something: you don't have to justify anything. Not to anyone or yourself. If you do something it's because above all you wanted to do that thing more than not doing the thing. I would be self-conscious about music I'd play in my car. And I'd try to justify why I liked it or preemptively insult it. Then I just stopped because it's my car and who cares?

Or if a person has an established "reputation" to the point where they are just a caricature, then any small change in their appearance or actions may be called out by a bunch of people. I know that's happened to me. The first time I wore these possibly hipstery boots. Or there are lots of examples. But when people notice the new change, you feel so stupid and scrutinized. My friend made fun of the boots and maybe in the past I would have said "yeah there are lame" or something. But I just was like "yep. Shoes" and then it never came up again. I felt dumb for all the times in my past when I felt like I had to justify something that I liked or something I did.

Also I feel like people who call you out feel childish when you stand by your change/action/whatever. They realize that it's not a huge deal.

I don't think you have to justify growing out facial hair to anyone. I think there is a weird pressure about growing facial hair for the first time. I never really tried, but when I began to appear to be somewhat noticeably unshaven, lots of people ask about it. I can imagine how it'd be annoying to grow facial hair.

Edited by °ᵕ° (see edit history)
SilverAlchemic likes this

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Posted

I know a thing or two myself about being disappointed with one's life and writing up big confessionals to get it all out there. And I can identify pretty well with what Teto is going through (except for the hair bit...) but I have made some serious progress in recent years. Stepping into college life has forced me to face my crippling fear of people, but has far from fixed the problem. But making any progress is a reason to stay hopeful. You can have a kool-tacular life ahead of you, Teto. I think it's pretty safe to assume you wouldn't share these feelings if you didn't accept the possibility of real, life-changing help coming from it, no matter how small the chances. Just don't give in to apathy and things will get better. Not perfect, but better. As a work-in-progress myself that's all I can say. :)

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