It depends on who's right. Because of how aware we are of how we feel inside, we are not always aware of how we appear outside. We are those two people--the inside one and the outside one. Both of them have their realities and if we are lucky, we will have a handful of people in our lives who are intimate with both of those realities.
The disconnect comes when we are not as intimate with both sides as we hope others to be. The disconnect comes when we either let others define us or when we define ourselves too narrowly when we are so much more. The disconnect comes when we take ourselves too seriously and take what others think of us too seriously.
People want to put other people in roles--not maliciously most of the time, just because it is simpler for them. They don't have to think too much then. We become the good girl or the bad girl (or boy), the smart one, the pretty one, the giver, the taker. We all do it. Ninety percent of the people in our lives are peripheral and we are peripheral to the same ninety percent. No big deal. But we all have to sort out the roles that are healthy for us to play and to understand we are just playing them and not to think they are our sum total.
