Embarrassing Inconsistencies

Text of document just discovered on the hard drive, retrieved from something I wrote in February of 2006 and italicized accordingly:

One of the more mortifying parts of the overlap between childhood and adultship is the gradual realization that, while you are indeed getting an increasingly good handle on Just Who You Are, this understanding has been a long time coming, and the years leading up to it have definitely been filled with awkward, schizophrenic shifts between confidence and mumbling, dancing and wall-hugging, flirting and fleeing from people and places and situations.

You then realize what a wonder it is that you've been able to establish any kind of identity and all, and *then* you realize, finally, that many of the people around you - friends, family, coworkers - could not possibly have overlooked these embarrassing inconsistencies, but never said anything.

Then it's almost unbearably humiliating to piece together the ultimate shame: all these folks who watched you stumble through interaction after interaction, meeting after meeting, aren't just some bunch of meaningless clods at all - they're your *friends*, and not only are they cool people, they're so much cooler than you ever gave them credit for that they saw your ridiculous blunders, kept their mouths shut, and went ahead and liked you anyway.