Sometimes there’s a void in me where a personality should live. Sometimes, the void is full, and my personality bursts forth in an array of stars and light and laughter. Other times, there’s nothing there, and I almost feel like I did when I was taking Lamictal—empty, cold, blank. Like a slab of concrete shaped like a person, gray and hard and utilitarian. Only feeling what I need to feel to survive—hunger, thirst. Not much else.
Things don’t quite get that bad all the time. Being on medications that work helps a lot with that, but sometimes, when I really sit back and think about what my personality is, I can’t come up with anything. Are we supposed to purposefully know? Are there different types of personality that we can fall into? Was the Myers-Briggs test right, or is it truly just bullshit like everyone says?
I tend to notice that I pick up personality traits and speech patterns from people around me. Sometimes—not all the time—I’m a mimic. Does this make me autistic? Could be. Is it just the ADHD? Most likely. I’m not sure about the former, but I know I have the latter pretty bad, which in itself mimics the former in some ways. Autism and ADHD crossover in interesting ways. They are intrinsically linked, holding hands over the crags and canyons of our brains like happy children.
In any case, I’m pretty high-functioning for what it’s worth, at least when I’m properly medicated. However, when I think about myself—I mean really think about the type of person that I am—I can’t come up with any satisfactory answers. I’m essentially boring, deep down in the marrow of me.
Here’s where I struggle—I suck at communicating verbally, and my personality is a patchwork quilt of phrases and jokes I’ve heard other people say, aesthetics I’ve seen elsewhere, attitudes I’d like to adopt. When left to my own devices, I won’t say anything, I won’t contribute to a conversation, and I don’t display any kind of engaging or interesting personality traits. I’m just a husk, to borrow a line from The IT Crowd. Sometimes I feel like I need lists of everything I like, believe, or have ever known so I can refer back when my mind goes blank from anxiety.
That’s insane behavior, honestly, to borrow a phrase from my sister. Writing an advice column where I answer my own questions is also insane, but when in Rome or whatever. I’ve always wanted an advice column, probably because I need a lot of advice.
In my teen years, I suffered from something we in the industry call Not Like Other Girls disease. Another name is Manic Pixie Dream Girl syndrome. In this day in age we call girls like this Pick Me’s. Whatever you call it, you know what I’m talking about. The trauma from having the onus of being a Manic Pixie Dream Girl thrust upon me in my youth still affects me every once in a while when I think about how I’m perceived—I have to be the coolest girl in the supermarket, at the coffee shop, at the party, at your wedding. I crave all the attention and yet shrink under its gaze. I want to be remembered for something funny I said, even though I haven’t said anything funny in the past five months. The ache I have for being the life of the party is debilitating, but not as debilitating as the anxiety I experience when I get what I want (yes I’m in therapy).
The truth is, I am like other girls. I wear high-waisted jeans, eat white rice, listen to Arctic Monkeys, carry a tote bag, read poetry, keep losing my chapsticks. We’re all unified by our complexities and uniqueness, a living, breathing paradox. There isn’t one girl who is more girl than others. There’s no such thing as “not like other girls,” because, yeah, I am.
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As far as not having a personality goes, I feel like I have more “persona” than “personality.” Right now, I’ve taken to modeling myself after Alex Turner, which is to say, I wear a pinky ring and yearn and write poetry that I want to turn into lyrics and think about taking up smoking again. I long for darkly-lit, crowded house parties where AM plays over the stereo, a mirror image of my college days. Essentially, I miss being young, and while I still possess somewhat of a youthful spirit, too many of my friends are embracing their 30s as if they’ve just entered their 60s instead, and they never want to go out. But at the same time, if I hang out with people younger than me, I look desperate and old, not to mention that I don’t even understand half of what Gen Z says or does. There seems to be no winning, besides going back in time and reliving 2015.
Why do I yearn for a time when I was generally unwell and undermedicated? I feel like I want to inhabit the person that I was then with the newfound tranquility that I possess now. I want to do my 20s over again, only this time with the clarity and self-awareness of my 30s.
But, of course, this is something that cannot be—we don’t get do-overs, and I’m wracked with grief for the person I was when I was in college. She was so tender and vulnerable in ways that were constantly taken advantage of. If you knew me in 2015, I’m sorry, but I was significantly fucked up at the time.
Not that I’m not fucked up now, of course, but I’m fucked up in a more mature, self-aware sense. Now I know what’s wrong with me, and I’m trying to fix those problems the right way instead of slapping a piece of duct tape over them and calling it a day. If you need wiring done, it’s the difference between calling a professional electrician or watching a YouTube tutorial and just doing it yourself. I’m at a point in my life where I’m calling an electrician, so to speak.
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What is my personality? Why am I so concerned with how I’m perceived? When am I going to get my head out of my ass and just accept the way I am? Maybe soon, maybe never. Maybe I’ll go on pretending, putting on and taking off various personas like the wrong coat until I find one that fits. Maybe I’ll never find the one that fits. All I know is that I’m trying to rewrite my disastrous 20s when I should be focusing on living in my blissful 30s. Can those two things coexist? Can I white-out those pages and write over them? Or should I just get a new notebook? Flowery metaphors aside, one thing remains true—there is no end to the journey. I’ve never been this age before, and I don’t know what to do half the time, and that’s never going to change. All I can do is be somewhat prepared for it.
For now, here's a comparison of me in 2015 versus me just the other day. 💙
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