A tale of three Jasons

Who I am deep down is socially unacceptable. To survive in this conformist world, I hide that side of me whenever I'm out in public. I hate my public side. In private, I try to spend time as myself. I have been known to refer to this conflict between my public side and my private side as a tale of two Jasons.


The more that I think about this conflict, the more apparent it becomes that I am oversimplifying. Around family, I am more comfortable showing my better but less acceptable side. Even so, there remains parts of who I am that could get me into trouble. My family tends to be conservative and anti-change. I'm mentally independent and supportive of change (with limits). I also struggle with personal attention, even from family. I'm reluctant to speak openly about issues when I deviate from a conservative perspective, and I suppress my desire for change.

Who I am deep down does not match who I am around family. This means that I have a public persona, a private persona, and another persona around family. This makes my life a tale of three Jasons. Actually, that's still not right. If you have been visiting my blog, you have likely seen me deviate from our rigid standards of social acceptability. I have written things here that I would likely suppress if I expected my family to read. Around family, I say some things that could get me into trouble if I posted publicly. I also have some thoughts that I'm reluctant to share with anyone. I guess that brings my total to four different Jasons that I can identify.

If I wanted to, I could look for more variants of who I am. For example, who I am at work is very different from who I am when walking at a park. There are more than four sides to who I am. People who can live their lives as themselves are lucky. For me, I have no choice other than to maintain a delicate balance between who I believe I need to be and who society will allow me to be. That balance can change depending on what I think I can get away with, but it's still a serious challenge in my life.