Modalism

Tonight, while doing a recruitment call night that turned into a recruitment letter writing night I had the chance to have a nice conversation with another 1st semester seminary girl that I hadn't really talked to before. As is goes, I haven't really had conversations with 85% of my classmates despite it being mid-November. But once again, the conversation was a reintroduction. A new chance to reidentify myself and I caught myself wondering exactly who I was.

There has never been a group that I completely fit into. Many groups in which I wedge myself, but never one that is fully me, me as I know myself. Or do I know myself at all? Even among my close friends I don't think I fully reveal myself. There are so many masks that I wear, so many hats that I try, so many modes of identification- who am I really? I want to be me, but I don't know how to do that. Society teaches us to see ourselves as others identify us. Which made me wonder if there are people that I fully am myself with.

I think that there are 3 people in which I don't have to put up a front. Is this sad or not? Then I began thinking about those 3 people. Jack is probably the most obvious. I'm brutally honest with him, more honest than I think I would want to be normally, but there's something so relieving about it. He's the only person that I feel comfortable being mad at, if that makes any sense at all. I suppose I know that even when I'm mad at him I still love him and he still loves me so it's a safe anger. Because I'm free to express that emotion the others don't seem so bad. I swear sometimes he knows me better than I know myself (which can be frustrating!)

Oddly enough, the other 2 people aren't ones that I thought would ever relate to in this way because I was super defensive among them when I first met them, but over the past semester I've discovered that Marie and Joey and people that I can be myself with. I can't explain why. We've been in Sunday School together for 5 (almost 6) years now and I think they know me about as well as I do and that I'm not trying to put on a different facade with them. Or at the very least I don't feel like I have to keep part of myself hidden from them.

I'm blessed with so many diverse friends, but I don't think that I'm completely open with them all of the time because I'm trying to live into their image of who I am based on how I relate to them. So here I go into school and life, a thousand images of me but all incomplete.