People are surprising creatures. They're never the way we think they are on first glance, and that's why I'm never willing to hate a person from first encounter.
I gain a new feature, a facet, with every experience I pass. So do you, so does she. That's why I like to learn more, search further, ask. What are your parents' occupations, which is your favourite season, how do you memorise lists. You have a different reason for each of your answers to those three questions, and your answers to those three questions could be reasons for other things. I know there's so much beneath that surface you present to me and maintain to be the definition 'you', your guard against the strangers. I won't assume that is you, because it can't be.
A person is a web of interconnected tales, not a single one. An epic of ten volumes, not a short story.
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So I am the same. Would I want them to assume that I'm a Cloud Cuckoolander weirdo who doesn't think straight, just because that's the way I introduce myself when I first meet someone? It might be hard to believe if you don't know me well, but I'm far from 'blur' and without-a-hint and situationally unaware. It's the cover I present because that's the way that comes naturally to me.
Enough time with me, and you'll know I'm a fantasiser, and maybe that's why I'm weird. Search deeper, and you'll know that I'm an emotional, impulsive, somewhat angry and nihilistic person. (I hurt myself, drench myself, engorge myself with water when I reach an emotional/mental BSOD. I make suicide threats left right and centre. I actually begin sometimes--strangulation especially.)
I like stories of the rich and the things they hide, of vast places whose every corner cannot be explored in a singular lifetime. I like to think of journeys and networks. I like to draw maps. Memorise them. Find the links. Sort of like how I like to imagine the human mind itself.
There's a reason to this, to all this hiding, in everyone. I am not myself around people I dislike, people I don't want to acquaint myself with. It's 'classified' information. I'm different around them, versus when I'm around people I like. Yet why do I define 'myself', in this context, as 'the person I behave as when I'm around people I trust'? That person isn't me either. I am again another person for my family, but that is still not me.
Someone said that you're yourself when you're alone. I guess we can judge by that. I'm a creator at her desk. I'm a person who can be trapped in a sheet of paper. When that conditional 'aloneness' is breached while I'm in the middle of an activity reserved for 'alone' time, I am desperate to chase the trespasser away. I am a loner, trying to be social. I'm a wanderer in my mind; I travel wherever my thoughts are able to move. I am a ship-rider. I dream of seeing the other edges of the world, and yet when my parents offer to take us on holiday, I vehemently refuse.
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We're all multi-faceted, and I like that. What I don't like is that I can't see all those facets at one glance, and that it's easy to make assumptions based on that single view of a soul, only to find myself surprised, often unpleasantly, when I learn of another aspect in suddenness. I have to unearth them, these windows. discover them one by one, and through them learn a little about the world that is housed inside.
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