TL,DR: I don’t want to be mysterious or hide who and what I am. What you get when you interact with me is myself, and there is no hard separation between the different aspects of my life or my person. I will not spontaneously expose you to parts of my life I think you may be uncomfortable with, and I will not necessarily discuss anything with anyone in any context, but nothing is hidden or secret, from my academic work to my sexy pics.
I don’t like social games. Or more specifically, I like them if they are really games, e.g. things we do willingly and deliberately, for the purpose of having fun or living some other experience, with well defined boundaries and context, and with nothing more at stake than the game itself. Roleplaying games is an activity I love and that is really important to me, and I enjoy playing devious, manipulative, cunning or mysterious characters. But I enjoy it because it’s a game, I have no interest in being like that in real life, because real life is not a game. We only have one life, we are not fully in control of how we live it, and there are no boundaries. Decisions can have consequences, sometimes drastic and unexpected ones, on both our and others’ lives. Everything matters.
Besides, I only have one life too, and as I’ve been painfully aware for a few years, it will not last forever. I often feel like I’m running out of time, or at least that I’ve already wasted enough time. I’ve suffered and taken bad decisions, hurt myself and other people, dedicated insane amount of time and energy to fruitless and joyless activities, and spent years passing by whole aspects of my life (and overfocusing on the precious few that could bring me some satisfaction), mostly because I did not understand who I am, how I work, and what I desired. I think the previous sentence is something a lot of people can relate to, but I maybe experience it in an extreme way - and yes of course it’s about transition. I’m 38 and I’m feeling a whole new world opening to me. The way I consider myself, and the way I relate to others, is transformed. My emotions, light or dark, as running wilder than ever. I’m feeling like I have everything to discover, everything to do, and yet I’m about twenty years late.
I don’t want to waste more time, and so I especially don’t want to waste any time on social games. At worst, they are just manipulation and using others as tools for your self interest. At best, they are well-known social scripts that can lead to harmonious although limited interaction, and there is nothing wrong with that by itself, but I just don’t have the time. I could be the mysterious stranger, or the cute shy girl, or the angry teenager, or the party girl, or the clever intellectual, or a score of other characters, and I can play those parts a bit sometimes when it’s useful, but I won’t make any of them my whole personality. It may be socially confortable but it requires hiding some aspects of yourself and magnifying others. It makes you give a warped, incomplete picture of yourself and it gets in the way of sincere interaction, at least initially.
Because of that, I prefer being directly myself. It’s quicker, more efficient, and the safest ethically speaking. I don’t want to hide who I am, and what I am, any more. On the contrary. I want to show it to anyone who cares, I want to be as direct and explicit and obvious as possible. My goal is to be exactly the opposite of a mysterious person. I’m nothing like perfect or exemplary according to any ethical system, but I’m not interested in pretending otherwise. Nobody is, and it’s not the point. The point is that when you are interacting with me, you know who you are interacting with. If you like who I am, or find me interesting, intriguing, attractive, funny, or whatever other traits that make you want to interact with me, and I’m okay with that, fine, that’s cool. If you mostly find me stupid or evil or gross or boring or scary or whatever other feeling that make you dislike me, fine. Leave me alone, or tell me to leave you alone if I’m the one engaging interaction.
Of course, being transparent makes me vulnerable. People who want to harm me can use what I expose to do so - or try to. I’m not afraid, and I’m quite resilient and confident, and I’m also lucky enough to be in a position where few people could have both the power and the desire to seriously damage my life. But still I have no illusion - I’m not impossible to attack, nor am I a perfect fortress of self-confidence and mental fortitude. Occasionally some people will want to harm me, and they will succeed, and I’ll suffer. On the other hand, there is also a peace of mind and a serenity in being transparent. You don’t have to worry that someone will discover something hidden if nothing is hidden. You don’t have to track what you told to whom, who knows what. The energy you don’t spend to hide yourself, you can use for other things - including to defend yourself if needed.
So I’m queer, and I’m a nerd, and I’m a (slightly burned out) scientist, and I’m a nonbinary trans woman, and I’m an introvert, and yet I love meeting people and interacting with them (that’s juste exhausting), and I’m a slut, and sometimes I’m cool and analytic, and sometimes I’m a crazy creative genius, and sometimes I’m just a tired emotional mess. Oh, I’m also neurodivergent as fuck, but I think it’s quite obvious by now. I’m scarred by some aspects of my past, and privileged from some others. I’m certainly a lot of other things; this is not exhaustive and although labels have their use, they are not restrictive.
If you want to be in my life, that’s what you should accept. Now, you don’t have to deal with all of me, fully and completely. For example, if I feel bad I won’t dump all of my emotional and psychological issues on you, unless I know you are up to it, because I know this can be hard to hear. As another example, I have a few social network accounts full of naked sexy pictures of me, and of course I won’t expose you to them without your explicit consent. But I won’t make any effort to make them hard to find or separate them from other parts of my life. Yes I have psychological issues, and yes I upload porn of me online, and I won’t hide that, or any other aspect of what I am and do. I’m not ashamed, and I’m not afraid. I just won’t force you to engage with those aspects of me either, it’s your call. I may or may not be open to personal discussion on some or other aspect of my life depending on our relationship and context (no, I won’t discuss my sexy pics with my students, that would be totally out of place), but nothing is hidden.
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