Vulnerable.

Seeing and feeling the hurt in one's eyes is a gift some say, an empath is what I have read, the ability to connect and feel what another person feels at a heightened level. This, something I have done since childhood, without awareness that other people don't naturally do this, or understand other people in that way. I can look back over the foundation of my own perspective in life and see that I was always adapting to what I perceived other people felt or wanted and therefore led me to being "liked" in many ways. The problem was and still is, is that people only like what is presented without actually liking me.

The hardest thing one can do is to understand that other people think and perceive differently than they do. I was always influenced by why certain people did things, why they were able just to be, "cool," and it wasn't something I could just mimic. In high school, I had a friend named Eric, he was popular, and good at sports, and well, just, "cool." He seemed to take everything with a grain of salt. I worked with Eric at a local pool where we both opted out of any difficult, "real" jobs to sit in chairs and get tans all day. Eric seemed to do this job cooler than me, though I tried harder to make it KNOWN that I was cool too, something you cannot mimic, for it just rings hallow, almost insults people.

Eric was cool because he was confidant, confidence comes from within about assuring yourself that you are enough and others can take it or leave it. Something that I could not mimic or grasp or fake. A frustrating life project as I would see characters in movies or throughout interactions as I grew up, I could never quite grasp what they had that I could not just do.

The biggest difference between a confident person and a person trying to present as confident isn't in what is done, but how and why, something that I couldn't have been any more opposite in than the "cool" people I encountered. They seemed to do because they just did, a representation of self in action, whereas I would do for the external acknowledgment from others, a struggle still today. See, the action may have been the exact same, the dress the same, the job the same, all of it, except the fact that the motive, the intent, completely different.

Now, why would anyone mimic another to be considered, "cool" thus having to cover up or alter their own self to achieve this status? Well, if you or I don't feel like we are enough and our choices are met unfavorably, something we may not be able to handle very well at the moment, then it is essentially telling ourselves, we are not good enough as us, so we need to be them, appear favorable to the masses, or the boss, or the other, "cool" kids. This a reason many behaviors continue and people will say how "cool" they are, yet, they do not mean much to us people who are merely presenting, because, well, it is just a performance and we know isn't the real representation of us.

So, back to the ability to feel and understand another. This is something all humans can do to varying degrees. It is simply called, "empathy" and it is the same part of our brain that tells us that another person is inauthentic, some subtle nuance the brain picks up where people can and have always been able to see actions as a mere performance and another, "cool" kid's was real. There is an invalidating factor when someone presents to us, lacking authentic self, it can offend like, "why not just be a real authentic person?"

Books written by Brene Brown and Curt Thompson, as well as older publications by John Bradshaw are great resources to help you understand what inside us prevents us from being authentic. Why, when I read all these, "I don't give a F**K" statements, am I unable to just not give any F**ks? Why can I not just live without presenting and continue following the adapted script I have made for interactions with varying people? I mean, I know this stuff, why can I not just say what is on my mind, do things without having to feel this need to present?

Shame manifested, prevents an inauthentic self, for if you reject my authentic presentation, I might not be able to handle it. I might be cast aside socially, losing connection with other people for they will now know, "the truth," the scariest and damning feeling amongst people. - L.A. Meier 

Look, this thing, this defense, this wall, presentation, front, whatever you want to call it is apparent in many different ways, situations, for there is no one-size-fits all on this. However, just know that you are good enough, your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, all of them the world will not always tell you or us that it is, but it is up to us to rely on the fact that God made us all different and that what we see and perceive through our unique filter is exactly the way it was meant to be, not to meet the wants of another, or the agenda of some company, but for you and your needs. What we need more than anything else is connection and by staying disconnected from one another through walls and lies and manipulations, or the more subtle, "presentations" to one another, we lack that connecting, that authentic-ness we so crave in life.

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These ideas are my adaptation of material I have read and heard from the previously mentioned authors, speakers, doctors, etc. What I have written is my way of telling the community of men willing to admit when they struggle with not being enough in the world of excessive gym-goers, that they are enough too, that book, sold here. Again, if you read and can relate, it is there to reinforce that which you might not want to admit out loud, just yet. At least if you can understand you/we are not alone, we can start the long process of dissolving this inner voice telling us we are not good enough without some external presentation.

God Bless.