Who am I offline?

I hope people offline get to know you as well as we do.

NYCinephile said these words here.

I went to answer it in a comment, then realized I had more content than what might be appropriate in comment space.

I'm often told that in person I can come off as distant or unapproachable until you actually speak to me. I come from a long line of general scowlers...so I  hear people say they thought I was going to be really something different then what I actually was. People expect me to be mean. Gruff. Snappy. And...I can be if I'm having a bad day or don't want to be bothered, but that's not my usual disposition.

I move through the outside world with purpose. There's always some place I'm trying to get to. Until I get there, I'm rarely comfortable. I'm always in a rush to get to the next safety point...and I'm not sure people are aware that that's what I'm doing. Milling about in free space is sometimes terrifying. People look at you, you imagine what they might be thinking...and it's never good. I assume people are going to be appalled by the things I secretly twist over. I assume they're going to be thinking about the blemish on my cheek...or how boyish I look in my jeans and sneakers...perhaps they will review my random crazed curls and think I should do something with my hair. Perhaps they will think I need to lose weight. They will think I'm too tall, too broad, too light, maybe too brown, too thick, too sturdy, too durable, not feminine or soft enough. These are the things that run fervently through my mind. Or at least did with urgency that slowly fades over my lifetime. I always assumed everyone I saw was finding ways to pick me apart, piece by rejectable piece. And then...they would smile. Or they would ask a question, or they simply say hello. And that icy exterior of protection, would melt...to our mutual relief. It's better now...but I won't sit here and say it's entirely diminished.

I guess that's my own defense mechanism. I would say it's easier for me to be "naked" in this space because of the anonymity. I have discussed the struggles with self-perception when you are an overweight child. I know much of my distance with people offline is the old habit of warding off a pending hurtful approach. I almost SEEK being avoided, because it's generally a relief as opposed to the challenge of actually having to be seen.

When I'm forced to be seen, i.e. business trips, tradeshows, first encounters with people I've not met before...I give them the RPM I deliver best. The suit and tie, as my sister calls it. I'm friendly, but distant. Chatty, but impersonal. I'll rattle on about my industry or my interests as if I'm being interviewed. It's automatic and requires no effort on my part. It's the element of me that is terrified walking into a bar, but completely comfortable walking into a boardroom of twenty perfect strangers and conducting a presentation. If I become a suit and tie, it's not really about me...it's about what I'm promoting. And that's not personal. That's easy. Because it's not truly what rests within my heart. If people don't like it, I am generally unfazed. Just because you tell me I'm not intelligent or I don't have good ideas - doesn't make it so. But tell me I have a waterjug head and a jiggle near my midsection that makes me look dumpy...now that's a damned fact I'm gonna carry with me for the next three hours. Tell me I'm a soppy, sensitive, weirdo...and that's gonna sting for a bit. Bottom line is...we all choose to accept some things as truth, others as fallacies. Rarely do we get it completely right. All that really matters...all that is really true...is what we believe to be true about ourselves.

I have a professional, impersonal arrogance that reminds me that I'm not beautiful in an aesthetic sense. I don't have to be sensual, sexy, or "attractive." Those things will eternally be up for debate depending on who you speak to. I am however, intelligent and capable. Even as a child those were things you could NEVER take away from me. You could never wound my mind...still can't. If I don't know something, I assume I can learn it. But there are somethings...you can't learn. Be. Have. At least, that's what I told myself. So I learned to project the parts of me that were good, in hopes of overlooking the parts that might not be so hot. It was a habit that's been very hard to break.

It was only when I reached my thirties that I began to slowly accept the notion that people might find my heart marginally as interesting as my brain. I still struggle tremendously with the notion they might find anything else interesting or attractive. But even that is shifting too.

Here, in this space...many of the faces seeing me, I never see. By it's nature, you are forced to know me by my words. Not my big head, or my broad frame or my size ten feet. You are forced to see the true me, the inside of me. The me I keep safe my locking it away behind a scowl or a tense expression in the outside world.  I don't have to get tied up in body image, or feel anxiety because I'm not physically perfect in every way. Isn't that funny? I've never been insecure about who I am as a person. My quirks, my mind, my heart or what I feel or think. My problem offline is that struggle with seperating the fears and pains of childhood from my reality.  I expect people to be preoccupied with the surface of me, it's almost as if I still expect to be attacked in the 'adult schoolyard.' I live each day offline prepared to defend my right to be here. And rarely is that fight required.

I wonder if that's not exacerbated by the fact that I am cancer the crab. Hard shell to protect a very soft heart. Do offline people get to know me this way? Over time, yes. But when I think about it...anyone who's become a dear person to me, has almost always gotten to that point by reading me first. Either long, wandering emails or instant messages or even random 'twits.' I'm brave by pen, wary by person.  Maybe that will change over time too. But if it doesn't...

Is that the plight of any writer?