Split Personality

"You seem like a really sad person," a guy said to me, walking beside me down the hallway.

"That's…comforting?" I replied, a laugh lingering somewhere around my voice.

He was an acquaintance. He didn't know me. Was I really that transparent?

But am I really a sad person? When I look at myself, I don't see another cliché case of teen depression. But is that what other people see?

Well, I'll tell you what I see.

Split personality.
Those two words have a very "crazy" tone lurking behind them. Like having more than one personality is some sort of illness. Some sort of glitch.

But is it really?

I have recently realized that I have two personalities. It was a disturbing epiphany.

A class of mine had just gotten into a somewhat-heated debate about bullying, and the ways to stop it. (In my personal opinion, I think that children should be taught that diversity is not a bad thing while they are still young and able to have things drilled into their fickle little minds, which I feel would be worth a try) The class treated bullying like an incurable disease, and I can see exactly where the mindset comes from as well. There's a bully hiding in every one of us. A side of us that would make the world hate us if we only had the balls to let it loose. And keeping that side of us hidden is as simple as holding your tongue. But in all actuality, that isn't very simple. It's kind of torturous.

A victimizer's goal is, obviously, to make you feel victimized. To test how easy it is to break someone.

And I broke. A long time ago.

Middle school was a four-year-long test. It tested my confidence, and I let it win the battle. They called me weird. They called me annoying. They called me fat. They called me ugly.

Stuck in the awkward stage between child and adolescent, my hair turned into a tangled mess of frizzy blonde curls, like Taylor Swift minus expensive styling and products. My metabolism took a nosedive, and the piles of food I consumed started to cling to my stomach, hips, and thighs. Every inch of my skin broke out with a terrible rash that dermatologists labeled as an unclassifiable cross between eczema and psoriasis. Basically, I went from happy child to awkward mess in hardly any time at all.

And the boys noticed. No, not in a good way. I can still hear a boy yelling in my face on the school bus about how "Halloween was over and I could take off my ugly mask." I can still see another guy ambling over to me in the cafeteria and asking if I would go out with him, while simultaneously explaining to his minions his plan to ask out the ugliest girls in the whole school to see what they would say.

That was over four years ago. And I can literally remember it like yesterday. What's that phrase about sticks and stones again?

After a few years of tormenting, I snapped. I accepted that they were right. I withered in their scrutiny, took their insults in silence. Kind of like a sick sort of concurrence, where I would willingly soak up every word because I felt like I deserved it. I figured it was the price I paid for being different.

And as I shrunk away from my victimizers, willing myself to disappear behind hunched shoulders and downcast eyes, they lost interest. I faded into the woodwork, and that is where I remain. A scared, silent wallflower. That word, "wallflower," it seems like such a cliché term. But what does it even mean?

As Patrick says in The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, "You see things. You keep quiet about them. And you understand."

And that's what I'm always doing, especially during the hours of eight in the morning and three in the afternoon. Seeing. Listening. Understanding. Watching. Wondering. Thinking. Assuming.

But never speaking.

When I am with my close friends, or when I am at home, I am me. I am hilarious. I am sardonic. I am open. I am talkative. I am opinionated. I think out loud. I am honest.

But when I am shoved in the midst of mixed company, I become the wallflower that cowered away from her tormenters, ravenous rodents with full intent to rip up the garden of just-blossoming personalities, never hesitant to ruin me in the process. I went from a unique, somewhat eccentric blossom to a withered wallflower, and the entire process was driven by fear.

Fear that still resides inside of me. Fear of rejection. Fear of judgment. Fear of humiliation.

That coward, that "sad person", she is my other personality.

During that debate on bullying (ironically enough), I didn't speak up. I didn't voice my opinions. I just nervously glanced at the people around me and wondered what they would think if I opened my mouth. Would I sound stupid? It wasn't worth the risk.

Hiding behind silence is so much easier. Easier than being judged. Easier than being rejected.

But how is it possible that I can simultaneously settle for what is easy and long for what isn't?

Which personality is really me?