For at least the last 12 years I have not been myself. I honestly don't even feel like the events that transpired in my life during that period even happened to me.
I've always been "impersonating people". Like I don't know how to "be myself". Everything that I say to others is really just something someone had said to me previously. I fake moods, jokes, opinions, I have no "genuine" personality to speak of.
When I'm around my best friend, I impersonate a combo of my sister/ brother in law. I say things either that they have said, or things that I'd think they would say. My opinions match theirs.
While around practically everyone else, I impersonate my best friend. I talk like him, act like him, copy his mannerisms, his humor. Even his facial expressions. People mistake us for brothers.
If im hanging out with someone and acting like my best friend, and then my best friend meets up with us, I'm screwed. Anxiety heightens, and I literally do not know what to do or how to act.
At some point when I was a child I was probably fully conscious of what I was doing and I could probably have reverted to myself much easier.
Now it is basically a hard-wired sub-conscious behavior that I do not feel normal unless I am engaged in.
Trying to trace back my steps I am coming to the realization that the "real me" is a quiet/sensitive boy. I have been faking being an adult (im 21), inside its like I quit developing at age 8 and have been in this hazy, fallacious reality. No action I make is genuine, but executed merely for a hopefully positive reaction from whoever is around.
If I try to "be myself" I will barely speak to people. All my passion/ joking/ all my blabbering, was fake. It was a defense. I feel vulnerable being myself and whenever I do, I usually succumb to the fear of impersonating people in order to prevent people's "concern" over "why is he so quiet?".