Myriad of Personalities

Over a lifetime of years, developing relationships from family & friends to acquaintances , I find myself wondering if my personality changes from person to person. With each person, I think we act differently. We say one thing to one person, yet would never blurt the same thing out to another. What makes us act differently? Maybe the nature of the relationship? Maybe it’s the trust factor? Or maybe it’s the way someone else lets you be yourself, instead of putting up a total façade. Do we put up airs in front of certain people we want to impress?

Let’s start out with friends. I usually joke around and laugh with the friends who are lighthearted and fun. These friends aren’t offended very easily with sarcastic jokes or comments I make in jest. They don’t take things personally, unless it’s a personal attack on one’s integrity. Insults are much different from making a sarcastic joke. When you insult someone, you hurt them- possibly making them want to become distant from you or break up the friendship entirely. There are people in my life who are very conservative and a bit uptight. There’s nothing wrong with that- they’re just reserved a touch. I tend to not tell as many jokes or make remarks that would normally make my laid back friends laugh. I become a bit reserved myself around these types of people.

I have some friends who are overly sensitive. To even entertain the idea of joking around about someone else, or even them, makes them upset. Sometimes they conjure things up in their own head. For instance, I’ll say, “Gee, I think I put on a few pounds!” They’ll immediately think you’re talking about them! “Well, she probably noticed my hips look bigger in these pants- and that’s why she’s mentioning that!” Wrong. I’m mentioning it because my scale gave me a few hints. I literally go insane with these types of friends because their insecurity levels are so high, that it’s like walking on eggshells when being around them.

We all have our levels of insecurity. But when does it come to the point where we have to say, enough is enough? What baffles me even more is that most of the people who are like this are usually the beautiful / handsome ones that hold themselves well in social settings. Underneath, they’re a pile of nerves about to explode. I feel bad for them, but I can’t help but feel uneasy about being in their presence. I can only imagine how many of my friends are reading this right now thinking, “Is she talking about me?” Watch.

There has always been a huge pet peeve of mine. I have a few straight girlfriends that are literally chameleons when they get together with me and the rest of my friends. What happens is, they end up saying, “Well I don’t know if I’m gay or straight. I think I may be bi.” And that’s fine. But in my opinion, you would already know this since childhood. I firmly believe that if you are gay, lesbian or bi-sexual, then you would know before even toggling around if this was truth or not. Also, it irritates me when a girl wants to make me, or one of my other friends a complete guinea pig to the whole ‘gay scene’. This happened to me before I was in a long-term relationship, and I fell for it a few times. Now I see a few of my friends going through the ‘guinea pig phase’, and it always makes me cringe. I know they’re going to get burned in the end.

It’s interesting how much more careful we have to be in order to keep a stable friendship with certain people. This even trickles over into family. There are different and unique personality traits that have to be handled differently. For instance, I can joke about one thing to one sister, but kind of tone it down with another. All my sisters are great with my sense of humor- so I’m thankful. One of my sisters is just hysterical. If you tell her, “Hey, your hair looks great today,” she’ll turn around and say, “Why? What was wrong with it yesterday?” It’s cute. But I have learned to stay away from the word “today”. Another sister of mine will take offense to the word “cute”. “What a cute top that is!” She’ll quickly glance at you with a questionable look… “Cute?” She wants “sexy” to be the word-- “GORGEOUS” to be the key word with any garment she is wearing. Again, it’s funny. Another sister of mine will take offense to the many remarks *I* give her about the baby safe locks all over her cabinets and house…even her toilet. She takes this very seriously (which I think is great and it keeps kids out of dangerous stuff), but I can’t help but poke fun at her about it. Each cabinet, toilet, door, and window is securely locked to prevent anyone (including adults sometimes) from opening it. Thank God I’ve mastered the toilet lock, or she would have kicked me out of her house for clean up in aisle two.

So now I sit here, wondering which person in my life is going to send me that email asking, “Was that one part about me?”