“My skin is not my own.”
-Leto II, Children of Dune

There’s a lot coming out in the past few days about the Ashley Madison website hack, namely that there’s at least 2 ‘major’ people who have been preaching/championing marriage and family while secretly having Ashley Madison accounts to for the sole purpose of cheating on their spouse. It got me thinking about contradictions.

How can people live with such a major contradiction in their lives? On a daily basis, they have to wake up every morning knowing that they are going to put on one face for the world while secretly wearing another underneath.

It’s extremely difficult for me to imagine, because I simply can’t do it. Well, I guess I can do it, but I really dislike doing it. But the more I ponder it, the more I convince myself that most people can fake who they are and what they believe on a daily basis, to a greater or less degree.

I see it every day at work. People who confess in private that they hate their job, they hate the politics, they hate the management game…these people still put on a smile and play along when the right people are around. They may know that there’s a contradiction buried inside them [I hate doing this but I’m going to fake liking it anyway] and yet they keep going. When there’s a question burning within them that they want to shout at a manager, they simply don’t.

I’m terrible at this. I hate wearing a mask. I hate putting on a personality at work, or in front of friends, or honestly, anywhere. I simply can’t live with the contradictions.

I’m no good at being someone I’m not, and while it often makes me an abrasive person, I still think it’s a good thing.

Trying to hold in my opinions makes me stressed out. I bottle it up, I get frustrated, and then I unload on my husband at night. I don’t like that. I understand it’s how so many people live their lives, but can’t I just be me, the whole day, every day? Shouldn’t people be allowed to just be themselves?

I’m not sure if we are afraid of what others will think of us, or if we are afraid of ourselves. Maybe they both amount to the same thing.

I have some advice to you, my readers. If you’re living in a contradiction: stop. Even if it means hurting someone, even if it means leaving your safe and secure job, even if it means finally admitting to yourself something you’ve been running from.

Who knows, maybe you’ll even have a chance to figure out why you let yourself live in that situation. Maybe you’ll allow yourself to learn something about who you actually are – the good and the bad – without hiding behind who you wish you were.

“Fake it til you make it” isn’t always a good strategy, because there’s a big difference between wanting something you can achieve and pretending to be someone or something that you’re not.