personality.
Nov. 13th, 2015 03:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
effluentSarah is a girl whose personality is mired in contradictions. She's ambitious, yet aimless. She's intelligent, but prone to making ill-informed decisions. She's desperately lonely, but actively pushes people away. And finally she has all the potential to live a happy and productive life, but she is too nihilistic to see that potential in herself and the world around her. It's quite a pitiable existence really, to see so little good in the world. But that's the person she is-- cynical and bitter through and through.
And worse, she has no real reason to feel this way, she simply is. She often thinks that she has no reason to be unhappy. After all, both of her parents are alive and well, she was always reasonably popular and successful in school, and she's had comfortable life free of tragedy. Why does she always feel like there's this gaping hole in her life? A hole that she can't seem to fill, no matter how many nice things she throws into it.That hole that she can't put a name on is her ambition.
At the core of her being, she is a powerful and ambitious person. She wants a lot of ambiguous concepts-- she wants greatness, power, influence, admiration, love... But these are all lofty things to desire, and it can't be hard to picture what these things look like in the real everyday world. So, like most children, when she was grappling with these feelings and looking for meaning in life she observed her parents closely. After all, her parents were both well respected and successful individuals. Her mother was a highly sought-after attorney, and her father was a neuro-surgeon at the top of his field. They were the picture perfect example of someone who was following the American dream and lived a life that was on the right track.
And what she discovered from observing them? Is that she hated their life. Their life was long hours at work, coming home to a loveless and empty marriage. Their life was eating Bertoli pasta at midnight while pouring over case documents, paying bills for some new tiling that was going into the bathroom that was slightly nicer than the old one but still a matching shade, putting on extravagant parties for other members of the community only to spend the whole night grimacing over how much it all cost. It looked like a life of going through the motions, a life of busy work and entrapment. She wanted none of it. Because while Sarah is ambitious, she is also a free spirit at heart. She hates rules, time schedules, and the feeling of being confined.
So if she can't satisfy her ambition by following in the footsteps of her parents, what can she do? She still didn't know, so her keen powers of observation were turned towards her peers. Sarah has always been an observant girl, and what she found in her peers was shocking. The more she observed them, the more she saw how messed up people were. Kids could be cruel, girls could be catty, boys could be assholes... And at the end of the day, the one thing that united all people was a desire to be liked. So she played to that. She practiced telling people what they wanted to hear. Using her keen powers of observation she learned the validation that people wanted, and gave it to them. But this lead to hollow, one-sided friendships that didn't leave her feeling any more satisfied.
As she grew older and exited childhood a new feeling started to grow in her. A gnawing boredom that she could never shake. The hints of ambition that she had in childhood grew as she still had nothing to channel it towards. School was boring with no end-goal in mind. Friendships were meaninglessly easy and simple when you didn't have to put genuine effort into them. Activities like sports felt like a waste of time if you feel like you're not competing against worthy opponents. She became bored, restless, and dissatisfied with a life that might seem perfect to an outside observer.
So she turned to the oldest habit of bored and ruthless teenagers-- drama. With one finger in every social pie at her prestigious all-girls high school, it was almost too easy to stir up drama. It gave her little joy, but at least it was some stimulation in her grey every day life. This nurtured another part of her, a manipulative side. It forced her to practice lying. Life became a game if illusions in her eyes. What illusions could she project about herself? What illusions were other people putting up? Now she lies as easily as she breathes, sometimes even when she has no reason to. Most of the time she wouldn't even be able to say why she does it, it's just an impulse.
And that leads to her next personality trait, Sarah is impulsive. This is at odds with many other points of her personality, because at the end of the day 90% of her impulsive decisions are incredibly bad decisions. And often times she'll make them even when she knows they're a bad decision. Why? Again, it all comes down to her gnawing sense of boredom. After she's assessed the risk of a situation (and she will have, because she is always assessing things, sizing up all people and situations that she encounters) and makes that bad decision because she knows it's a bad decision. Because in those moments the boredom is so overwhelming that she wants to test herself. She wants to see if she can wiggle out of this jam, or avoid this consequence. Sometimes she succeeds, sometimes she fails... She's not the type of person who cares about winning or loosing, she just cares about the thrill of the chase. But she tries to be smart about it, if she's taken too many risks in a small amount of time she'll hang back for a bit, and develop her respectable reputation. While she likes some trouble now and again, she still cares more about having the freedom to go where she wants and do what she wants-- and that's hard to do when the authority figures in her life are breathing down her neck.
At this point, it's obvious that Sarah isn't a good person. While she can be empathetic, she lacks a basic sense of caring. But this doesn't mean that she's utterly heartless. She actually had a weak spot for kids and genuinely kind people. She doesn't believe that those people exist (at the end of the day, everyone is selfish... at least, that's what she'd say) but when she meets those people they tend to melt her heart. But then she has a tendency to distance herself from those people. After all people like them shouldn't have to deal with assholes like her, and she gets no pleasure from messing with them. Because of this she traps herself in this senseless cycle where she believes in the worst in people, surrounds herself with people who support that belief, and never forms genuine relationships. And ironically, genuine relationships is exactly what she needs! If she had people, or a cause that she cared about, it would give her a place to channel all of her untapped energy. And if she was helping people that she cared about, it would leave her feeling fulfilled and she could finally find purpose in her life.
But for now she remains in this in between. A girl who goes to great lengths to appear perfect to others, but is a passionless husk of a person. Someone who is so dissatisfied with life that she makes terrible decisions in secret hope that something in her life will change as a result. Someone who needs genuine connections in her life but makes no effort to find what she needs. Someone with fiery ambition but no dreams of her own. Someone who asked herself "what's the point of it all?" and found no answer. Someone sad, lonely, pathetic, and foolish, but ultimately someone who has all the potential in the world.
And worse, she has no real reason to feel this way, she simply is. She often thinks that she has no reason to be unhappy. After all, both of her parents are alive and well, she was always reasonably popular and successful in school, and she's had comfortable life free of tragedy. Why does she always feel like there's this gaping hole in her life? A hole that she can't seem to fill, no matter how many nice things she throws into it.That hole that she can't put a name on is her ambition.
At the core of her being, she is a powerful and ambitious person. She wants a lot of ambiguous concepts-- she wants greatness, power, influence, admiration, love... But these are all lofty things to desire, and it can't be hard to picture what these things look like in the real everyday world. So, like most children, when she was grappling with these feelings and looking for meaning in life she observed her parents closely. After all, her parents were both well respected and successful individuals. Her mother was a highly sought-after attorney, and her father was a neuro-surgeon at the top of his field. They were the picture perfect example of someone who was following the American dream and lived a life that was on the right track.
And what she discovered from observing them? Is that she hated their life. Their life was long hours at work, coming home to a loveless and empty marriage. Their life was eating Bertoli pasta at midnight while pouring over case documents, paying bills for some new tiling that was going into the bathroom that was slightly nicer than the old one but still a matching shade, putting on extravagant parties for other members of the community only to spend the whole night grimacing over how much it all cost. It looked like a life of going through the motions, a life of busy work and entrapment. She wanted none of it. Because while Sarah is ambitious, she is also a free spirit at heart. She hates rules, time schedules, and the feeling of being confined.
So if she can't satisfy her ambition by following in the footsteps of her parents, what can she do? She still didn't know, so her keen powers of observation were turned towards her peers. Sarah has always been an observant girl, and what she found in her peers was shocking. The more she observed them, the more she saw how messed up people were. Kids could be cruel, girls could be catty, boys could be assholes... And at the end of the day, the one thing that united all people was a desire to be liked. So she played to that. She practiced telling people what they wanted to hear. Using her keen powers of observation she learned the validation that people wanted, and gave it to them. But this lead to hollow, one-sided friendships that didn't leave her feeling any more satisfied.
As she grew older and exited childhood a new feeling started to grow in her. A gnawing boredom that she could never shake. The hints of ambition that she had in childhood grew as she still had nothing to channel it towards. School was boring with no end-goal in mind. Friendships were meaninglessly easy and simple when you didn't have to put genuine effort into them. Activities like sports felt like a waste of time if you feel like you're not competing against worthy opponents. She became bored, restless, and dissatisfied with a life that might seem perfect to an outside observer.
So she turned to the oldest habit of bored and ruthless teenagers-- drama. With one finger in every social pie at her prestigious all-girls high school, it was almost too easy to stir up drama. It gave her little joy, but at least it was some stimulation in her grey every day life. This nurtured another part of her, a manipulative side. It forced her to practice lying. Life became a game if illusions in her eyes. What illusions could she project about herself? What illusions were other people putting up? Now she lies as easily as she breathes, sometimes even when she has no reason to. Most of the time she wouldn't even be able to say why she does it, it's just an impulse.
And that leads to her next personality trait, Sarah is impulsive. This is at odds with many other points of her personality, because at the end of the day 90% of her impulsive decisions are incredibly bad decisions. And often times she'll make them even when she knows they're a bad decision. Why? Again, it all comes down to her gnawing sense of boredom. After she's assessed the risk of a situation (and she will have, because she is always assessing things, sizing up all people and situations that she encounters) and makes that bad decision because she knows it's a bad decision. Because in those moments the boredom is so overwhelming that she wants to test herself. She wants to see if she can wiggle out of this jam, or avoid this consequence. Sometimes she succeeds, sometimes she fails... She's not the type of person who cares about winning or loosing, she just cares about the thrill of the chase. But she tries to be smart about it, if she's taken too many risks in a small amount of time she'll hang back for a bit, and develop her respectable reputation. While she likes some trouble now and again, she still cares more about having the freedom to go where she wants and do what she wants-- and that's hard to do when the authority figures in her life are breathing down her neck.
At this point, it's obvious that Sarah isn't a good person. While she can be empathetic, she lacks a basic sense of caring. But this doesn't mean that she's utterly heartless. She actually had a weak spot for kids and genuinely kind people. She doesn't believe that those people exist (at the end of the day, everyone is selfish... at least, that's what she'd say) but when she meets those people they tend to melt her heart. But then she has a tendency to distance herself from those people. After all people like them shouldn't have to deal with assholes like her, and she gets no pleasure from messing with them. Because of this she traps herself in this senseless cycle where she believes in the worst in people, surrounds herself with people who support that belief, and never forms genuine relationships. And ironically, genuine relationships is exactly what she needs! If she had people, or a cause that she cared about, it would give her a place to channel all of her untapped energy. And if she was helping people that she cared about, it would leave her feeling fulfilled and she could finally find purpose in her life.
But for now she remains in this in between. A girl who goes to great lengths to appear perfect to others, but is a passionless husk of a person. Someone who is so dissatisfied with life that she makes terrible decisions in secret hope that something in her life will change as a result. Someone who needs genuine connections in her life but makes no effort to find what she needs. Someone with fiery ambition but no dreams of her own. Someone who asked herself "what's the point of it all?" and found no answer. Someone sad, lonely, pathetic, and foolish, but ultimately someone who has all the potential in the world.
