One day, a co-worker of mine asked me whether I am from abroad. I answered "no" and asked why she raised the question. She said that I don't look or act like a local. (This scene occurred when I first started my current work.)
The above was not the first time someone I know tell me that I look and act like an outsider, someone who belongs somewhere other than the place I am at. To understand why, a little glimpse into my past may yield some clues.
For various reasons (family migration, being admitted to a university in another province), I have changed school more than a handful of times. As a result I have some experience in settling to a new environment.
In most cases, I seem to have little trouble adopting to the new surround. At least, that is what others appear to think. While it appears that I am quite good at adopting to a new surrounding, perhaps it is just that I "re-invent" myself each time I arrive at a new place — in each occasion, I change my behaviour so that I appear to be less of an outsider.
The above behaviour seems to show that I have selective amnesia and forget everything (people and experience) each time I move to a new surrounding. In particular, I have a habit of withholding some details of my past when I meet someone new. Of course, it is quite difficult to keep one's true colours hidden for long and it did not take long for others to realize that I am not what I say I am (at least, that is what I think).
While sometimes I think I am acting like an outsider unknowingly, but there are other times when I think that I am acting the way I am because I want to keep others at bay; to keep them from understanding me; to keep them thinking that I am someone who prefers to act as if I know nothing. The funny thing is that I keep on acting this way even after they realize that I know more than I choose to say and figure out my personalities, both good and bad.
The adoption of a new personality each time I arrive at a new surrounding may be a symptom of something else. I am not sure what that something is (yet), but some clues seem to have emerged. For instance, coming up with a new persona to others has become a bigger struggle lately. One explanation for this struggle may be that I have (finally) come the conclusion that I have been acting as if I am someone else for too long and I should show who I really am, whatever it happens to be, to the world.
As mentioned earlier, those surrounding me usually figure out what I truly am like eventually. Knowledge of this should have prevented me from doing what I have described above — to act in a different way in a new setting — but it has not. I don't know whether I am too stubborn to admit I am wrong or I find changing my way of presenting myself to the world too arduous a task (or is it that I am unwilling to change).
It is often said that it takes a lifetime for one to figure out oneself. While I don't expect to understand myself completely, it would be a good step in getting others to figure out what I am really like, without the need for them to break through the smoke and mirrors I have set up. (This probably is good for myself as well, as I can act more natural this way and save the energy wasted in building all those smokescreens.)
(If this article appears to be my admission that that my mind is all over the place on this subject, I think you are correct. Perhaps this is what happens when one is not sure about something — one mulls over every possible explanation one can come up with, over and over again, without achieving any breakthrough.)