Sometimes, I can feel it coming. At other times, it takes me over
without the slightest warning. It happens at seemingly random moments. I
have, so far, failed to determine what the trigger is. Whatever the
reason, whenever it happens, and though I could stamp it down, I embrace
it. Because it turns me, for a few moments, into the person you (and I)
secretly wish I were.
I have never done drugs - well, I love a sugar high - but I can imagine this is how drug users feel. The exhilaration, the escape, the abandon, the feeling - the knowledge - of invincibility. For a few moments, of course.
For a while, the quiet, cold, flawed, deeply insecure (if very clever) individual fades to black as an interesting, amicable creature of raw confidence and charm emerges. The transformation is complete. Jekyll and Hyde. Or, for people allergic to reading (there's something terribly wrong with you guys), Banner and the Hulk.
The intellect remains,but no longer as my main selling point. I become utterly mesmerising. Adventure? Count me in! Social taboos? What are those? Even the humour is spot-on. And the looks help too, especially now (thanks, HIIT).
People naturally gravitate toward those types. It makes perfect sense: everybody likes to be entertained. I, for one, rely heavily on entertainment in order to maintain my sanity (says the one blogging about what could possibly be a mental disorder). In my 'altered state', I become an avatar of entertainment.
There are drawbacks, of course. There always are drawbacks. Hyde murders, the Hulk makes no distinction between friend, foe or bystander... And I lose my sense of empathy, one of my core attributes. Fulfilment of my desires becomes my prime directive, and I simply stop caring much about other people's feelings. Oh, but I can still act like I care, so people are none the wiser.
Eventually, though, my baseline persona reasserts itself. It begins with a thought, a shard of doubt, or of fear. Sometimes it is a memory of some kind, usually of an occasion when my current state failed to be triggered, or was triggered, to sad effect. The thought starts a chain reaction, robbing me of my smooth eloquence, of my daring, and so on. Before you know it, I'm back to bland as dough.
Then comes the remorse over any 'forward' thing I might have said, the worry over how I am now perceived, and the avoidance of people who call, expecting more entertainment, not knowing they're now dealing with an entirely different person.
I'm back to being an empath, though. And I get to keep the bod, so there's that.
