I have a major identity disorder (untreated) because since I was ten I’ve been contorting my facial features at all waking hours to disguise my true appearance.
I have naturally droopy eyes, large lips for a man, and an overbite. Every day, I squint my eyes, curl my upper lip in when I smile, and jut out my lower jaw just enough to drastically change the shape of my face and the general relationship between my features.
When I became aware of the strangeness of this behavior as a teenager, I was desperately concerned that others would notice the cracks in my veneer, so had difficulty sitting on the left side of people (the right side of my face was the least controlled) and having any pictures taken of me.
This coupled with deep depression made the years of quintessential self-discovery in a young person’s life ones of intense confusion and detachment.
Over the years, however, I’ve fine-tuned this behavior so that among most I’m now considered to be a conventionally handsome man when in truth I’m conventionally ugly by normal standards.
When I approached adulthood and went to a large public university, I took the opportunity to create a public identity that matched the physical countenance I had molded for myself – one of the utmost confidence and charm. Many people bought it, but the image flickered on bad days. I grew further from myself.
Then, two years ago this summer, a close friend of mine killed herself, shattering my false sense of social standing and condemning me to a relationship with a girl I didn’t love, who also had severe identity issues spawned from abuse as a child.
After getting her into therapy long enough to break up with her, I immediately entered another relationship simply because it seemed like a light at the end of the tunnel. I do not love my current girlfriend either, as much as I tell her I do.
As a 21-year-old today, I deal with crippling anxiety and ontological dislocation regularly. I cannot reconcile the physical differences between my true appearance and the image I’ve contrived, and I fear that it is too late to let go.
I have no idea what physical toll “letting go,” that is relaxing my facial features for longer than a minute or two, would have on me, let alone on my psychological state. It will need to be a gradual process if I ever decide to accept it.
For now, as a perfectionist in all of my pursuits, I live in constant fear that I will lose control and others will see the shadowed figure behind the mask. I am afraid that that figure is my true myself because I don’t know what that would make me.
takeittothegrave