I’ve struggled with anxiety my entire life. I don’t go to concerts because crowds freak me out, I panic whenever I have a job interview or a social commitment that I didn’t have time to mentally brace myself for. My immune system doesn’t exist and I’ve been slowly losing weight for almost a year because I’m permanently nauseated (which is cool in a way but also kinda shit). Recently, I started getting car/bus/train sick, which is something that never happened to me before and is honestly not a development I’m fond of. Any time I see a new health professional, about three minutes in they always ask something on the lines of “you’re a nervous person, aren’t you?”, which mostly kills me because I’ve been working very, very hard for years not to show it.

So when I sorted myself and I got a pretty solid Slytherin Primary and Slytherin Secondary with a Ravenclaw/Hufflepuff/Gryffindor Secondary Models… I thought to myself “nah, that can’t be it, look at what a mess I am”. I spent days wondering about it, not conceiving how that Secondary or any of them really actually fit... however, yesterday, I was chatting to my best friend of twelve years about my eleven to sixteen year old self and, all of a sudden, I realised "no, wait, this makes sense".

Now, for context, up to the age of ten, I was a sensitive flower. If you called me a poopie head, I’d cry. Since kids are mean, I cried a lot. Like every day, for almost four years. I don’t know how or why (I blocked most of my memories of that time), but it happened. 

And then I changed schools. 

Free from social expectations and people who knew me as a crybaby, I remember swearing to myself I’d never cry again… and somehow, I became tough as nails.

Those years are what I call my golden years. I remembered them fondly because it was the time in my life when I was both the most vulnerable inside and the least vulnerable on the outside. My life policy for those five years was something on the lines of “if something needs to be said or done, just say it or do it”. 

And no, this isn’t an I Peaked In High School story. This is actually a story about how I’ve always been better at being a Slytherin than I ever realised.

When I got sorted I got Slytherin Primary, it didn’t really come as a surprise. I’ve always been very “me me me and mine” and my social circle has been carefully curated over the years until I got rid of everyone who was even the least bit toxic or just plain wasn’t good for me.

Do I miss those people I ghosted? Sometimes.

Do I regret doing so? Never.

But this isn’t about my obvious calling as a selfish person who’s very, very keen on the few people they love.

This is about how, for years, I didn’t think of myself as being particularly insightful or cunning or adaptable or anything enough to be a Slytherin Secondary. 

Sure, I get people. My friends know if they call me with a particularly thorny problem I’ll either help them through it or at least make them feel a million times better about it. They know that even if I’m a shitty and mostly lazy introvert, I’ll move mountains for them if they call on me.

And yes, I code-switch. I have different personas for different people, and I tend to adapt to social situations… but I’m also an anxious mess and I wasn’t sure I actually qualified because I systematically forget all the good stuff about myself.

Yesterday, however, I was told by my best friend of twelve years that when I was eleven to sixteen yeas old:

1. I thought myself above everything and everyone and was the most self-assured, possessed girl in the world,
2. Every time someone insulted me or pissed me off I’d just laugh in their faces and it would slide right off
3. I was particularly venomous.

This means a few things that had never, not once had occurred to me:

1. For five years I somehow managed to convince everyone around me including my best friend of twelve years (who I consider an insightful and intuitive person) that at the time I wasn’t an anxious mess with rock bottom self-esteem that would cry at the drop of a hat. 
2. I convinced everyone in the meanest school of the district that those insults that cut me to the core were nothing to me, that I was untouchable.
3. I wasn’t just mean as a means of self-defence as I remember being. I remembered it as just being vaguely a bitch like “yeah, yeah, I hope you and your entire family die” but apparently that wasn't the case. According to my friend, fifteen year-old me actually tapped into people’s insecurities and stabbed them where it would hurt the most. They were tailored insults, which is something I never, in a million years, would have thought myself capable of - and I don't mean morally, I mean existentially. 

I’m not gonna lie, I have a few regrets from what little I can remember of that time. Not about hurting everyone - some, maybe most of those people really had it coming - but about those few people I actually liked and who didn’t deserve it at all but got caught in my persona's virulent line of fire, especially my best friend of twelve years, who is one of the people I apparently said some pretty nasty things to in the three months before I became his friend. 

I don’t actually remember any of this, but obviously he does.

Apparently I was never a bully, I didn’t target anyone in specific and I sometimes even used my evil powers for good… but I still hurt him before he became one of mine.

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But for a Slytherin Secondary, adapting so constantly can feel like wearing a mask. A mask that is still genuinely them, maybe, but a mask nonetheless. There is an awareness of presentation and a prioritizing of presentation that the other Secondaries don’t quite do. And underneath that mask, and that awareness, is always going to be their neutral state.

I actually left that school because I knew I didn’t want to have to continue being a bitch and there was a fostered, pervading environment of general assholery that would never allow for that to happen. I got myself a new opportunity to wear a mean, less blunt, less venomous mask and I switched schools.

But that’s not why I’m here.

The thing that struck me the most about yesterday’s conversation is that somehow, despite all this internal mess I live with and think is absolutely obvious, most people apparently can’t tell that it’s happening… at all. I managed to fool everyone into thinking I was a completely different person. For five years.

Yesterday I also managed to convince a room full of interviewing people for a cool freelance gig that I was the best thing since sliced bread. No matter how much I was dying inside, scared out of my wits that I’d show just how little experience I really have, I somehow projected an aura of confidence and self-assuredness and know-how that allowed me to bring a contrary skeptic to his knees.

Which leads me to think that, anxious mess or not, I’ve always been able to bullshit my way through life.

I’ve killed it at every interview I’ve ever gone to, which up to this point I had thought was because I was very realistic about what interviews I should take, but in retrospect it wasn't always so. I got a lot of jobs in college that I never should’ve gotten, some of which I was either completely unqualified or wrong for. When I was twenty I somehow managed to land myself a coveted job in THE museum/concert hall for one of the wealthiest charitable foundations in the world dealing with major conventions and classical music audiences. 

Nevermind that I was a pedantic sensible engineering student with a mild contempt for the sensitive artists of this world, that had very little artistic flair of my own and no interest whatsoever in classical music (I actually developed a taste for it while working there) and that, like I’ve mentioned, I struggle in crowds and at that point had never been to a concert in my life!

Like, how even?

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Slytherins will adapt to their own best advantage without thinking about it. They’ll walk into a situation and things will work out to their benefit without them quite knowing what happened or what they did to influence it.

In that situation, I somehow managed to convince three of the pickiest, judgiest people I’ve ever met that I was right for that job, a job that I desperately wanted and that made me some of the best friends I have right now. And while in that job, I was constantly booked for more concerts, more conventions and more gigs than anyone else... despite my social anxiety and my distaste for multitudes of people crammed in small spaces.

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Slytherin Secondaries will completely transform when it’s required. This gives them great effectiveness in spur of the moment plans and separate, unconnected situations like social interactions with strangers

Seriously, how even? 

Up to this point I had always assumed it was a combination of blind, dumb luck or stupidity from whoever had hired me.

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They are good at spotting unexpected opportunities and rapidly shifting their aim and approach in order to snatch up the possibilities in front of them

Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe, in retrospect, I have never been as shit at life as I thought I was. Maybe, even if I don't do it as consciously like my snake of a husband does, I'm actually pretty flexible and insightful... just in a more intuitive way.

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But when they are feeling safe, in the company of trusted people, or when they are feeling particularly apathetic and done with the world, Slytherin Secondaries often let all those shifting layers drop—this is the neutral state. The neutral state is easy to mistake for a Gryffindor Secondary because there is a similar sharp-edged, unreserved honesty to it. But the motivation for this honesty is coming from different places.

Gryffindor Secondaries, on the other hand, are honest and blunt because it feels wrong and disingenuous for them not to be. It is an imperative for them in a way that it very much isn’t for the Slytherin Secondary. 

One of the best comparisons between the Gryffindor Secondary bluntness and Slytherin Secondary neutral state is this: a Gryffindor is an unstoppable force. A Slytherin in the confidence of their neutral state is an immovable object. Slytherin Secondaries do not charge. They stare at you and blink while you try to explain to them why they should move anywhere they don’t want to. 

Most of my friends think a Gryffindor secondary would fit me best... but that's because of this Neutral state and the fact that I use a lot of my Gryffindor Secondary Model with them. The idea of lying to people has never phased me in the least, especially if that's the best way of dealing with a problem. I like it when I get the chance to be blunt and honest - it thrills me - but I think that while being blunt and honest may be more genuine... most of the time it's downright stupid.

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Slytherin Secondaries will completely transform when it’s required. This gives them great effectiveness in spur of the moment plans and separate, unconnected situations like social interactions with strangers, but can put them at a disadvantage in situations that require a ‘long-haul’ kind of mentality: creating a reputation as a good worker at your job, as an honest friend, or as someone you can always go to for a safe place and a good opinion. The same flexibility that gives them such an advantage is their downfall when success relies on consistency of method.

I've actually created a reputation for myself for all of these things... even if none of them are an actual thing. My friends all assume I'm blunt and honest with them... because that's the idea they have of me. Some of my friends think I'll always tell them what I think without sugar coating it because I've carefully crafted this honest, blunt persona... which means I get away with lying and making them feel better far more efficiently. They take great comfort in bluntly spoken, lying words because they assume I'd never tell them a lie.

The sentence "coming from you that means a lot because I know you always say it like you mean it" has been used a lot of times and honestly the absurdity of it makes me want to laugh.

I lie all the time, I just do it well. 

Everyone thinks I'm trustworthy and that they can tell me whatever they want because I won't judge or make them feel bad and I'm genuinely good at giving advice... because early in our acquaintance or in that very conversation I offered them deeply personal insight into myself and "trusted" them with things that most people would shy away from sharing with anyone let alone someone they've recently met. And they assume that, since I told them a deeply personal and super embarrassing story about myself to encourage them to talk, they can pretty much say anything... when the fact of the matter is, I don't have secrets. What's the point of all those deep, dark, embarrassing moments if I can't use them?

Manipulative? Not consciously... at first. Now it kind of is. But when I tell people about that one time six months ago when I rushed out of the house in the morning and a) dropped a pair of knickers that had been entangled in my jacket on the floor of the bus I was riding and b) had the used pantyliner that matched said panties stuck to my jacket facing outwards for a whole forty-five minute commute, it's out of a genuine desire to make them feel that whatever they're about to tell me, I definitely won't judge them.

Because I mean, have you read a) and b)?

Either way, all this introspective insight has actually made me feel much better about myself. It means that no matter how much I panic, no matter how much of a wreck I am inside... most people can't actually tell if I don't point blank tell them that's what's happening.

Kudos if you've actually gotten this far!

Love,
Maria