more like yourself every day

[cosmolinguist]

This morning I read something attributed to Agatha Christie:

As life goes on, however, it becomes tiring to keep up the character you invented for yourself, and so you relapse into individuality and become more like yourself every day. This is sometimes disconcerting for those around you, but a great relief to the person concerned.

I've been watching people at the more recent stages of leaving bad marriages and seeing them tell themselves or be told the same things I was told when that was me: I look forward to seeing who you will become is what I remember from this time.

And...I appreciate I have literally transed my gender since then. And gotten my first white-collar job. But...I also feel like I haven't changed. I am still bad at relaxing, at having hobbies and I fear this is because enjoying my free time requires more self-driven impulse than I seem to have (except in circumstances where it's terribly inconvenient, I have many and strong impulses there!).

The idea of "relapsing into individuality" is so interesting to me because this makes it sound so easy that overcoming it takes work. Divorce gave me every license to shed "the character I invented for myself," but I just feel like I don't have anything left once I did.

I don't exactly feel bad about this, but I do feel curious about it.

Comments

[angelofthenorth]

Relaxing takes time and practice. (See comments passim about taking 2 weeks off)

[cosmolinguist]

It definitely helps to think of it as something that needs practice.

[otter]

I have so many friends that I love dearly who have been/may go through the process of leaving bad marriages/partners. And I agree that on the whole we do all shift and change. I know I have.

Thinking, thinking.

[silveradept]

It does take work to be a person you are not. I think the "masking" concept captures it most effectively, both in the amount if effort it takes to maintain that person, and also how people get very disconcerted when the mask isn't firmly in place. (And then take it out on you.)

I think I have gone back more toward who I was before, now that I'm free of the person who needed me to be someone I was not.

[sfred]

Yeah, I'm not sure it was as straightforward as stopping the effort of not being me. Maybe like how it's not straightforward to relax muscles that you've been tensing for years.

[cosmolinguist]

Yes I think that's a good analogy for how it feels to me, too.