Who Am I To You

We all know that we react differently to different people in our lives. Although my circle of friends is small, but they're not always in the same circle. In Linguistic, we learned about Kachru's Circles of Englishes comprising of the Inner Circle (Native Speaker), Outer Circle (English as a Second Language) and Expanding Circle (Eng as Foreign Language). 

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The relevance of this model is that I find my circles to be much like this; the Inner Circle being my family, Outer Circle as my closest/most transparent friends and relatives, Expanding Circle as most people on social media. 

People get comfortable with me quite easily, and I tolerate them in return. My family, on the other hand, knows the person I can be when I don't want to be a person, or an adult - or how I actually respond to stressful situations. With others, I observe the way I get treated. I analyse their behaviour, words and wonder why they're still my friends. 

I'm terrible at keeping in touch. Most times, I don't text first or ask them if they'd like to hang out. A few weeks ago, a friend expressed her frustrations, and yet I still didn't text her first. Honestly, very often I have nothing to say or share. I live a monotonous life, and when someone says they find me therapeutic or out of the ordinary, I wonder if that's a good thing. 

A couple of weeks ago, I had thought of writing a post on why I can't spend too much time with anyone. However, I was so drained out that I needed to recharge desperately. I had spent one weekend with friends and came home feeling more restless than I anticipated. I was not rejuvenated or relaxed. I was exhausted, which was why I couldn't hit up the phone to text them what a wonderful weekend it was. 

Then I realised something. I am about 76% Introverted but I quite often enjoy social outings. I like talking to people and hanging out with friends. Depending on the people I am with, my energy either depletes or increases. I've had periods where I had spent 3 days hanging out with different people, which made me feel more energetic and happy. On a different occasion, I spent 5 days with the same group of people but was so easily consumed. I was so lethargic. These are so obvious to me but I haven't found the right way to channel my energy without feeling so burn out in the end. And this generally happens within my Outer Circle. 

I don't know where I'm heading here, because I thought I was going to write about the different personality/behaviour we have depending on the people we're interacting with. I guess we become the person we see most fit in a situation. I've never been 100%-ME. 

60% of the time, I would share just as much information about my life and myself within my outer circle, regardless of which sub-circle they are from. 30% would be filtered information (what I deem fit to be shared amongst us) and the remaining 10% is the information that would've completely change their perception of me. 

I am not a very curious person and enjoys my time alone. I do get lonely, but I don't become depressed out of it. I get more emotionally affected by another person than I am with myself, and I try to avoid that. So I just become terribly bad at communicating with people. But I do genuinely appreciate my closest friends, who still thinks about me and get me involved in their lives. It means a lot because I want to be a part of something even if it only means to laugh at their jokes. 

Still, I question myself a lot and it fears me most to hurt the people I love. So I take precautions by being quiet. 30% out of that 60%, I'm just quiet even when I'm with them, I can be quiet. So if my silence comforts you, then you know that you've entered my Outer Circle.