On the perpetual search for self and authenticity

It is sometimes said that the four greatest and most influential Portuguese literary figures of modern times are Fernando Pessoa. Pessoa, whose name means ‘person’ in Portuguese, had three alter egos. He actually wrote under many names, but several of them were ‘heteronyms’ rather than pseudonyms. Not only were their writing styles completely different; they had entirely different world views, different aesthetic sensibilities.

While attempting to reflect on how I would define authenticity or what it means to me, I found myself drawn towards a poem by Ricardo Reis, a heteronym of Fernando Pessoa.

Para ser grande, sê inteiro / To be great, be whole:

Para ser grande, sê inteiro: nada

Teu exagera ou exclui.

Sê todo em cada coisa. Põe quanto és

No mínimo que fazes.

Assim em cada lago a lua toda

Brilha, porque alta vive.

To be great, be whole: nothing
Of yourself exaggerate or exclude.
Be all in all things. Put what you are

Into the least you do.

So, in every lake the whole moon
Shines and, soaring, lives.

This poem speaks to me about the importance of integrity and of being what we are - not more or less - and perhaps showing up with an acceptance for where we’re at in that given moment. The self-acceptance piece is what I’m still working on.

I believe I probably grew up with a skewed and fragmented self-concept and no amount of introspection has helped (yet) to truly reconcile my inner reality with my outer reality. Self-censoring and concealing or masking parts of my self is such a deeply engrained behaviour for me that sometimes am not even sure which aspects are true - If I am so self-aware, how can I be so unaware? If I like the perception that others reflect back to me, why does it not rest easily within?

Once I started school, I clearly remember the split feeling of two entirely different experiences of self: an outside persona who presented as confident and capable, and an internal experience of self-hatred and self doubt. In my mind, only one of those things could be true - my entire self concept was built around dichotomous thinking; an internal struggle that was probably amplified by having a mother with borderline personality disorder and a father who is most likely a sociopath.

My observation of my parents is that they were both pretty good at 'fooling others' on a surface level, and I believed that was the explanation for why other people liked me. They didn't know me, I was pretending to be someone or something I wasn't. I often dissociated from any emotion, particularly when I was in my dad's presence. Instead, I tuned in cognitively and watched him closely. How could someone who displayed a complete lack of empathy or remorse be able to charm people the way he did? As a child, I wondered how it was that someone that I knew to be bad was perceived by other adults as 'good'? I took that a step further. All these bad things are happening at home, but people believe that I am good. How do you reconcile seeming exceedingly confident and capable, yet suffering terribly in silence? I felt that what I was presenting to other people was 'a cover-up.'

Self-presentation and impression management is an ordinary part of everyday interactions and we all show different sides of ourselves in different contexts, but sometimes the act of 'not putting all of my cards on the table' feels deceptive. Sometimes I worry that the disparity between how I present myself to others and what I'm feeling on the inside means that I'm still not being authentic.

So here are my confessions: I am more sensitive than I ever let on. I'm highly tuned in to everything sensory and I'm habitually filtering things out or finding ways to manage the intensity (It wasn't until I found myself having to support both my children in finding ways to manage their own sensory overloads that I realised that perhaps this wasn't how most people experience the world). I am hypervigilant: hyper-aware and hyper-alert, constantly scanning my environment and tuned in to subtleties that seem to go unnoticed by most others. I think I try to add depth and complexity into relationships, so another layer in my mind is constantly analysing every emotion, thought, interaction, event ... both while it's happening and then retrospectively. 

Every now and then I catch a glimpse that there may be a gradual shift in some of the fundamental ways that I see myself (thanks years of therapy!) and I am learning that it's possible to make space for all of these things. I am trying to step away from self-erasure and self-compression and just 'be'.

“But I am not perfect in my way of putting things
Because I lack the divine simplicity
Of being only what I appear to be.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Poems of Fernando Pessoa

I am never "only what I appear to be" and maybe no one else is either. Being ‘real’ is a process. I love the children’s book, the Velveteen Rabbit, where the Skin Horse says to the little Rabbit, “Real isn’t something you are, it’s something you become.”