Real Me

When most people look in the mirror, what they see isn't very pleasing to them. A mirror shows you the reverse of your real face, so handsome people appear less so, features thought to be symmetrical are revealed to be slightly irregular, and so on.
For me it's different. The man I see in the mirror is overall quite satisfactory, with hair that goes in the right direction and a passably good looking face, albeit with a big nose. You can see the problem.

My birthday this year was better than any in recent memory for the simple reason that more people remembered. OK, I didn't get more cards or anything, but I had lots of birthday texts and messages, and it was lovely. But it also drove something home for me. Whoever I am as a person, most of me is virtual, and all things considered, that's the best place for me.

There's not a lot I admire about myself. It's no exaggeration to say I detest myself physically. I hate my horrible misshapen face, my awkward body that so perversely combines the least enviable attributes of my parents (my mother's skin tone, tendency towards weight gain and punishingly unmanagable hair; my father's nose, body hair, and total lack of physical co-ordination). Were I ever to come into serious money, a major priority would be cosmetic surgery, to have the deviated septum and fucked up teeth that have brought me no end of misery corrected- perhaps this would make a difference to my awful, droning voice, too.
Remember how a simple nose job completely transformed Jennifer Grey's face (and admittedly ruined her acting career, but that's hardly a worry for me)? Oh God, how I'd love that, to be unrecognisable. I wouldn't hesitate for a second to shed this hateful skin.

In that sad, creepy way common to men like me, I find myself staring at the beautiful people. Well, OK, the women. I try not to, I really do, but I forget myself. I live in awe of the graceful, the pretty, the ones who sparkle. I've never known the company of a girl like that and I never will. No girl I have ever liked on a personal level has ever returned my feelings. I'll never be touched by that girl, I won't make her smile on seeing me. Nobody smiles when they see me. I'm a weirdo with the face of a weirdo. People react to my presence with aprehension and actually, I don't blame them. I do the same to people like me.

If not my appearance then my manner keeps people away. I'm a hopeless conversationalist, my thoughts never successfully manifesting themselves as coherent sentences. Rather I mumble a lot, I'm always thrown and go instantly blank whenever anyone asks me anything, and my rare attempts at small talk somehow transcend the usual standards of inanity, usually resulting in excruciating silences and people who can't bring themselves to look me in the eye. I spend a lot of time brooding, and not self-consciously, but from anyone elses perspective, I'm just the oddball not saying anything, which probably nudges me into the realm of the slightly intimidating. People who do have conversations with me find me tedious, repetitive (my appalling memory doesn't help) and rather baffling.

If only there were compensations. Though I'm bright, I'm not brilliant and God knows I'm not educated. Nothing I have to say ever inspires anyone. I've no special talent to speak of and the list of things I haven't experienced or cannot do is endless.

None of this is relevant to virtual me. Most of my friends don't have a real sense of what I look like because there aren't many photos of me, and those that I let people see are the best of a bad bunch. It goes without saying I am not photogenic. Most haven't heard me speak, or at least not much. Some don't even know my real name.

Online I can be witty, because I can think about what I say before say it. In real life, I have to repeat most everything that comes out of my mouth for clarity's sake, which always ruins the moment when I try to be funny. Online I can be sincere, compassionate and even wise, because these are the better facets of myself distilled, removed of impurities, given shine by dint of a lack of context. People online tend to like me and enjoy my 'company'. The vast majority would never choose to spend time with me, or make the effort to know me. In the same way most of us immediately throw walls around ourselves when encountering the emotionally guilless, the vulnerable, the childlike, the lonely elderly who greet you like an old friend, most people won't let me get close because, damn me, I can't help but wear my heart on my sleeve.

I try to mask it with fashionable cynicism and affectation, but the plain truth is, I have always desperately wanted people to like me, to want me, to embrace me to them. I can't help it. I've always felt so isolated and so... 'other'. That's the only way I can quantify it. I'm different from everyone I've ever known and you cannot imagine how much I don't want to be this way.

If, as I have long suspected, I suffer from BPD, then I am a textbook case. I live in extremes. When people upset me, the rage is overwhelming, when I am slighted, it cuts me to the bone. I am incapable of forgiveness. But I also love the people I call friends, hell, I love the people who are nice to me in work. I can't feel things in moderation, it doesn't just doesn't compute. That's why I really don't care if I've never met some of my friends in person, they're still as dear to me as if we'd grown up together or lived together for years. Nothing matters to me more than their safety, than keeping them from harm and helping and comforting them in any way I'm able.
There are times I wonder if I'm just incredibly selfish, that maybe I just need to be needed, to feel like I'm worth anything. After all, I did spend the better part of a year lavishing my time and money on a homeless girl. Oh, what a saint I felt. Oh, how noble and enlightened I was. I was actually shocked when it was spelled out to me I was being conned. It wouldn't have shocked you, or anyone with a lick of sense, and it sure didn't shock my mother, who at least did the decent thing by spelling it out to me gently. I'm still furious about it now and I'll probably still be in 20 years time.

I'm not sure if I have a point here or not. I will say though that the fear of our humanity diminishing via our reliance on computers feels more and more like just another science fiction dilemma based on a faulty premise, like the idea of atomic energy giving rise to giant monsters. What we failed to predict was how many dislocated souls in the world would, when give the choice of existence as an internet construct or running out the clock as a supporting character in their own life, take the virtual over the reality without a second thought.

I know my 'other' life- and if the internet has taught me nothing else, it's that everyone, and I mean everyone, has a secret life- is almost entirely artifice, just me staring unblinkingly at a bright screen and hammering away at a keyboard. The Other Me has no substance, and when the time comes, he will leave no imprint. That might bother someone else. But all I have to do is look in the mirror and... I'd rather be nothing.