Questions Written on My Face

I've spent half of April 29 wondering if something crazy would happen. And I'm spending the other half trying to prevent anything interesting from happening at all.

I had plans. I was supposed to go to a write-in to work on my novel. And I decided I couldn't. I wanted to lock myself in my shoebox-sized apartment and block out the world for a bit. I even considered turning off my cell phone (but decided I shouldn't render myself unreachable, in case the craziness of April 29 manifested itself in some sort of emergency situation... but even just considering it was a big deal). I just want this special day to not be special anymore. I want it to be like any other day.

Instead, I decided to stay in and write a blog post. On a Tuesday. Because I have something to say. Some thoughts that I have to drain from my skull before they flatten my brain like a pancake.

In the comments section of my last post, my buddy Nilsa said:

I think you should start posting "real life" pictures of yourself (i.e., post-storm) instead of continuous dolled-up ones. We already know you're gorgeous! :-)

This seemingly innocuous comment got my wheels turning in a major way.

I post the pictures that I do because I'm interested in photography. I really like taking photographs of people, but most people I know don't seem to like getting their picture taken. And besides, my camera isn't particularly great. So I improvise. I take pictures of myself. Using my laptop, as I don't have to hold it as I would a camera. I'm both the amateur photographer and the model. It helps me practice. I'm learning about lighting and angles, and even a little bit about editing (although very, very little... any editing I do is in iPhoto, which doesn't have a ton of functions).

Or, at least, that's what I tell myself.

The reason I didn't post a picture of me post-storm was because I didn't have a camera on me then. If I had one at the time, I'm sure a picture would've been taken. And who knows, maybe it would've been posted. It would, after all, have illustrated the story rather nicely.

And I have put a lot of candid pictures on here. Even a few in which I don't think I look particularly attractive.

But maybe not.

I take so many pictures. So, so, so many. And most of them get deleted before anyone other than me sees them. Any picture you ever see of me that I took? It has gone through a strenuous approval process. I have hemmed and hawed over whether it's good enough. I've hit delete on so many pictures. Ones that are blurry. Ones with bad lighting. Ones where I don't look like myself. Ones with bad angles that make me look like I have a double chin (my greatest fear).

I paced around my apartment trying to figure out why that is until I found an answer that is, at least in part, true.

Sometimes I'm afraid that people will see me the way I see myself.

*her vulnerability clicks into place*

It's true. You know how people say you can be whomever you want to be? Sometimes I wonder if I'm only pretending. I like the idea of being the quirky, light-hearted, smiley girl. But am I embracing who I am? Or am I pretending to be something I'm not and taking on this persona as some sort of facade? Maybe my entire being is a lie. Maybe I don't want people to see that I'm really just normal. And boring. And not special in the least.

I see the bad things about myself before I see the good things. I see how thirsty my dry skin is, and how badly it breaks out and taunts me when I over-moisturize it. I see the disorder in my eyebrows. I see the gaps reforming between my teeth because I stopped wearing my retainers once a month like the orthodontist said I should. I see my loathsome neck and the double-chin effect that it has been producing for the last 10 months in photographs and mirrors alike. I see my pathetic, bony wrists. I see the features that seem too big for my face. I scrutinize every detail. I'm sure I've worked myself up over problems with parts of my face and body that other people wouldn't look at twice. But then, why would they? These things are my burden, not theirs.

There are days when I think I'm attractive. And there are days when I don't. You may have noticed that two of the posts I put up recently had photos that were clearly taken on the same day. I stockpile them sometimes. Whenever I have a day when I feel cute, I take a bunch of pictures. Because I know there will be days when I don't feel cute. And I want to have those pictures. They make me feel like maybe I was once. And maybe I could be again.

God, that makes me sound so... fake. And manufactured. Maybe I am to some extent. Maybe I only allow people to see the parts of me that I approve first. Maybe I need that level of control.

You know what, fine. Here.



This is what I look like right now, at this very moment. I'm lying down, typing, with all the lights off. I'm wearing a truly hideous nightgown and am not wearing a stitch of makeup. And the sunset in the background is far more interesting than I am.

When I look in the mirror, I see me. I see all the flaws that come with me. And not just physically. I see the tenacity. I see the fear. The loneliness. The indecision. The manipulation. All of it.

Sometimes I have conversations with myself in the mirror. I will literally ask myself questions and answer them. All aloud. And sometimes I surprise myself with the answers. Sometimes I say things that I didn't know were underneath the surface until I say them.

(Note: I just started typing out one of these conversations, and then realized just how inexcusably dumb it sounds.)

There's a line from the movie The Truth about Cats and Dogs that Uma Thurman's character delivers... "Did you ever look in the mirror so long that your face didn't make sense anymore? It just becomes all these shapes. Just shapes. Not good or bad."

I do that. My face has lost a lot of meaning to me. I look at the pieces instead of at the whole. Sometimes I stare at my reflection until I'm near tears. And what's really horrifying and embarrassing about it is that I don't know why. Maybe it's just to see if I still can.

Do other people do this? Is there something wrong with me? Shouldn't I have grown out of this by now?

But I haven't. I have flaws. I have fears. I have insecurities. I have more boundaries and barriers than international travel. I can try to work through them as much as I like, but they'll never be completely gone. They're a part of me... Take it or leave it.

So you know what, while I'm in this vulnerable, uncovered sort of mood, I'm opening it up. I'm blatantly ripping off an idea from my blogging buddy Tipp (hope you don't mind).

Leave a question for me in the comments.

Please.

And, barring anything that might make it possible for an online stalker to track me down or a person I know in real life to find me via Google, I'll answer it. Honestly. Openly. Vulnerably. Longiloquently. And to the best of my ability.

Seriously. Anything. Even if it's something stupid. It'll give me something to think about other than the thoughts that are currently rolling around in my head. And that would be a welcome distraction. And it'll remind me that someone, somewhere, wonders what I look like on the inside.

ETA: Hey, lurkers! Come out, come out, whomever you are!

I hope it'll be a learning experience for all of us.


May you step back from the mirror and try to see yourself another way.

~A~


P.S. Please don't go paying me obligatory compliments and trying to build up my self-esteem or something. I wasn't fishing for niceties with this. And frankly, knowing that you've read what I've just written, it would be hard for me to believe them anyway.

P.P.S. Maybe that's what was supposed to happen today. Maybe that was my fluke. Having a weird psychoanalysis in my apartment alone, with no outside stimulus. Happy April 29 to me.

P.P.P.S. I'm sorry, Bri.

Poetical Parentheticals

My mother often will comment to me that she enjoys reading e-mails I’ve sent her because “you write just like you talk!” I don't understand... Doesn’t everyone? Why would you write any other way?

I agree with her. I like to think that I write in a fashion that is similar to the way I speak. Run-on sentences and fragments. Beginning sentences with conjunctions. An appalling amount of long, winding parentheticals (I don’t think that’s even a noun, but someone I know uses it all the time, so I’m stealing it… and I just realized that I put in a parenthetical right after mentioning my use of parentheticals. That was unintentional, and I’m slightly embarrassed that I’ve accidentally proven my own point. But since it so beautifully illustrates what I’ve said, I’m leaving it in. Wow, I didn’t mean to start that sentence with a conjunction. Smooth move, Angela. At least there is now evidence that I know myself). Other than omitting my disturbing usages of “like”, “um”, and “uh”, this is pretty much the standard way I communicate.


I probably shouldn’t admit this, but to make certain that everything I’ve written is something I would say, I recite each of my blog entries out loud once through before posting them. I remove anything that’s too fluffy or unnatural, because I don’t want to be that sort of writer. I want to be, for lack of a better word, real. (If you’ve met me, and you try hard enough, I bet you can hear my voice right now…. Helloooooooooo!)

I’m not one for long passages of purple prose. I’m not going to grab a thesaurus while typing (or rely too heavily upon the thesaurus I have internally). I’m not going to carefully compose something that is linguistically artful. I’m just going to write. And I’ll write whatever thoughts come into my head, whether they follow or not. Just like I’m doing now. Which is why I’m writing about writing instead of actually writing something of interest to others. Because that’s what I’m thinking. (Luckily, I’m a decent typist. Otherwise, this would be a far more complicated and arduous task. My fingers can’t quite keep up with my thoughts, but they do alright.) I still choose my words, because if I said everything that popped into my head, I’d surely be committed against my will. I have no desire to be institutionalized. I imagine that it would be far less interesting than the movie Girl, Interrupted made it out to be. So I only let the debatably crazy thoughts leak out (until I’m being arraigned for something, in which case I will find a way to use insanity as a defense. I wonder if that would work with parking tickets...).

I like to think that, despite my breaking the occasional rule of language, I'm relatively articulate. I think I get most things across exactly as I intend to. Although I do, from time to time, have to translate my thoughts into a language that can better be understood by people who aren't me. It’s not that I’m dumbing down my writing to make it more accessible (which I certainly did on occasion in my previous online journal… I had a couple of regular readers who became confused and alienated when I chose words in excess of seven letters… and I loved having fans so much that I catered to them a little in order to bait them into returning). I will only translate myself if the things I wish to say don't seem to be understood the way I wish them to be.

I'm not going to try to impress you. Why should I? It's not like you're going to read this if you have to google half the things I type. I hate reading ostentatious or patronizing writing (if you don't know what those words mean, then you really should invest in a good dictionary... trust me, you need it), which is why I refuse to compose it. I will not read text if it seems that the writer is out to prove something about their abilities or how “deep” they are. Tell me a story (or four). Take me on a journey full of ideas. Make me think. But don’t choke me with words; I won’t put up with it.

For the record, I am quite capable of writing at a more scholarly level than I do. I am, after all, rather cerebral (or, as I generally prefer to paraphrase that, “I think too much.” It makes me sound like less of an egomaniacal jackhole). Maybe someday I will. Just to prove a point. I’m not even sure whom I’d be proving it to (myself, I suppose). I’ll write something so condescendingly profound and pretentiously b****y that you’ll deign it to be good writing, if only because that’s the kind of writing you have been taught is good. I’ll throw in tons of unnaturally large words so that you’ll be confused as to what it’s even about, and you will be forced to say it’s great rather than admit that you had no clue what on Earth I was talking about. We’ll see. Someday. Hopefully I’m stimulating and eloquent enough that it won’t be a problem in the meantime. And if it is a problem, I have a couple of other blogs I can recommend that might better suit your liking (the very sorts of things that I, personally, will never enjoy).

I learned something while writing that last paragraph… I am apparently hesitant to swear in my blog. I took out two instances of using language that my mother would not approve of, and I used asterisks on a third (I actually considered going back and paraphrasing that last one… replacing b****y with “haughty” or “pompous” perhaps, but I decided to keep my self-imposed suppression to a minimum. Besides, that one seemed necessary). I don’t know what I’m afraid of. I guess that people will read it, realize I know how to use curse words, and condemn me to some netherworld in which people are made to suffer until they can respect language. I try not to swear very much. I only began swearing about a year and a half ago. I always felt the power behind those words when I used them sparingly. Throwing one out in conversation made people shut up and pay attention. Now, I spit them out a little too freely. I usually ask for forgiveness about that. It just seems like the right thing to do. I apologize at work a great deal, as I use the phrase “what the hell?!” quite a bit while talking to my computer about why it is choosing to so rudely disobey me.

(I wish I knew how to type an interrobang on the keyboard. An interrobang is a piece of punctuation that looks like a question mark and an exclamation point rolled into one. It takes the place of “?!?!?!” rather nicely. The alternative seems confused and rather juvenile.)

You know what, I’m done. I would normally allow this to evolve into a blog entry about something (anything) else, but I just don’t feel like I should. I think I’ve said what I needed to say (although, trust me, I have about three directions I could take this entry from here… and it’s a little hard for me to not dive into any of them). And for those of you who are psychoanalyzing me right now (I know there’s at least one of you who is), yes, there’s a reason that this is on my mind. And yes, like always, I’m judging myself, over-thinking things, and wondering if I should just delete this whole blog altogether. But that might just be because I’m listening to “Feathers and Doom” by The Cardigans right now and it makes me want to curl up into a ball and be reborn as something more beautiful than myself.

And yes, if you’re curious, I did just read this aloud and cut a whole slew of things that didn’t quite sound like me; they sounded like me trying to be a writer.

May you never try to be someone you’re not, in writing or in life.

Much love,

~A~

P.S. I hope you paid attention to rule #7 (and if you don't understand why I pointed that out, go back and read my first entry, "An Introduction to My Mind")
P.P.S. I chose the title because of a scene in Twelfth Night. A disguised Viola has written a speech for Olivia on behalf of the Duke Orsino. She begs to be allowed to read it, saying, "I would be loath to cast away my speech, for besides that it is excellently well penned, I have taken great pains to con it." Later, she states, "Alas, I took great pains to study it, and 'tis poetical." I felt that those statements somehow applied to this entry and wanted to find a way to stick them in. And besides that, I find "poetical" to be a very fun word.
P.P.P.S. If I had not already named this blog ~angelaboration~, I think that "Poetical Parentheticals" would suit it rather nicely.

A Little Water Clears Us

I don’t cry very often. When I do cry, it’s an event. It’s intense. And it doesn’t leave my body for several hours. I might revert to a puddle without much warning.

My mother, a nurse, often reminds me that there is a correlation between crying and stress. There are proteins (or hormones? Can’t remember…) found in tears that build up within the body during periods of emotional stress. So when you cry, you’re basically releasing stress in liquid form. She says that the old adage, “have a good cry; you’ll feel better” is therefore scientific fact. I have a tendency to believe her.

In the movie Broadcast News, Holly Hunter’s character takes her phone off the hook for a few minutes each day and cries. I knew one person who cried in the shower. I have a history of crying as I pray. I think that tears are an important part of life. In fact, I wish I cried a little more often than I do. It reminds you that pain is real. It proves that you’re alive. It helps you to remember that things are going to get better, because eventually, you will stop crying. No one cries forever. To quote Regina Spektor, “people’s children die and they don’t even cry forever.” (Note: that’s from her song “Rejazz", which is an excellent break-up song, should you ever need one.) And, perhaps most importantly, it releases those hormones before they build up and cause physical pain (yes, that can actually happen).

I cried in June, while at a bar and intoxicated, because a guy stepped on my foot. Please note: I’m not pathetic. My feet had been through the ringer that day. I spent the whole morning and afternoon walking around the city in some horrible shoes. I went out and bought flip-flops to give my feet some relief. And then my foot had gotten caught underneath a revolving door, which was just as painful as it sounds. All this happened just a few hours before the drunken guy put all of his weight on my foot (which, I remind you, was in a flip-flop). And I’d been drinking. Additionally, this was about a week after my break-up, which was probably the real reason I was crying.

Before that, I don’t think I’d cried since the first week of March, when I had a complete breakdown and started yelling at my roommates. I’d been trying my best not to explode during February (as that month is always disaster and depression for me), and as a result I held some emotions in for longer than I should have. Turns out, my frustrations were not things I could just chalk up to my annual unhappiness.

I cried Sunday night. More than once, which is usually the case with me when I cry. I was in a discussion with a friend, and I spilled out onto the floor like a bag of marbles. I’m not even entirely positive as to what triggered it. I guess he said something that I knew was right, although I can’t remember now what that was. I just remember needing a hug. So I took the L over to the abode of the fellow I’m seeing. I showed up at his door, he let me in, and I promptly ensnared him in what I’m sure he realized was a vital hug. He obliged, and held me for as long as I needed (thank God… I hate it when you need a hug and the person hugging you starts patting you on the back – which is a subconscious sign that they don’t want to be hugging you – or tries to do that tight-squeeze-and-release thing to try to get you to let go). We then sat down on a bench on his portico, and he let me cry it out for awhile (which was crucial, as I couldn’t put my thoughts together at that moment anyway) before getting me to talk about what was wrong. After venting for a bit and finding myself unable to hit the root of the problem, I ended up clenched in the fetal position on his couch, trying to shake a migraine and feeling entirely vulnerable.

It was a night when I needed to cry. I’m not sure why… I think it was just the right time. Something set me off, and then I was a drainpipe, a sprinkler, a fountain, or some other plumbing contraption… Maybe it was something more severe than that. Harder to turn off… A typhoon, perhaps.

Here’s something weird: even while I was crying I was judging myself. Do other people do that? I was acutely aware of the fact that I looked a wreck while sobbing uncontrollably. I realized that there was no good reason for me to be hysterically weeping, and I felt pathetic for not being able to explain myself. And I kept thinking that the way I cry is embarrassing, and that I should try to come up with a new way (much as I have done with my laughter… I have about eight laughs, and I’m not happy with any of them… there’s a cackle, a squeak, a guffaw… none of them satisfying). The kicker to this, of course, is that the whole reason I began to blubber had something to do with a friend pointing out my lack of self-esteem and the general negativity I have attached to my self-image.

My friend theorizes that this is why I have difficulty taking compliments. It’s because I don’t love myself enough, and I don’t think that the positive things people say could possibly apply to me. The fellow I’m seeing, on the other hand, thinks I have trouble with compliments because I have trust issues. It’s probably some combination of both. And apparently, this topic of conversation is enough to cause me to be a sniveling, whimpering mess.

I like to think that I’m a pretty up-beat person (although I’m not sure you’d get a sense of that from my writing, as I use it as a method of venting). At work, my nickname is “Sunshine”, because they think I’m always cheery and energetic. I rather like that. I try to bring lightness to my workplace. Yesterday, I brought in cinnamon rolls, cookies, and some candy to try to lighten up a manic Monday. It was relatively successful. I keep a list of all the funny quotations I hear around my department and e-mail it out every couple of months when people seem down (a recent favorite was a conversation in which a coworker tried to convince me that someone’s brother was named “Danish”). I used to take a “dance break” at 3:37pm every day (actually, it was sometime between 3:30 and 4:15, but it became known as “the 3:37 dance break”). I put on a piece of music like “Do Your Thing”, and would dance around for one minute, and then go back to work. I mostly did it for the morale of my coworkers, so when one of them complained, I stopped (luckily, she just got a new job in another department and will be leaving at the end of the week, so my dance party can resume at its usual time and place. Woo-hoo).

Sometimes, I’m downright goofy. I like that side of myself (not as much as Story-Mode, but it’s still good). I have fun when I go to Meijer to ride the mechanical ponies or vibrating purple dinosaur. I always enjoyed singing along to Oldies radio at the top of my lungs with all the windows down in my mini-van. I like dancing while waiting in line at the post office. I like giving people stage kisses (the kind of kiss where your hand is in the way, so that you’re not actually kissing the other person) in the middle of the mall. I like playing “Never Have I Ever” in situations where it doesn’t seem appropriate (and I almost always win – or lose, depending on how you look at it – because I’ve never done anything. In fact, I just had a “Diet” soda-pop for the first time in my life on Saturday… Diet gingerale. It was part of a mixed drink, and purely unintentional on my part, but it happened. *sigh* At least I can still say, “Never have I ever had Diet Cola”).

I don’t do the “goofy” thing as much in Chicago as I do in Michigan. It was a little depressing to acknowledge that yesterday. Maybe I’m not as happy here as I should be. Maybe I’m not as comfortable being myself. But then, half the time I’m not even sure who the *bleep* I am anyway.

I wish it would rain. There has been some wicked rain here this summer, which I have delighted in. I put on my puddle-jumping shoes and a smile (ah, a brief return of silly, goofy me). I love rain. Somehow, rain makes me feel relieved. It reaffirms my faith. God is washing away all the problems and making everything clean, bright, and ready to grow. It reminds me that everything is going to be alright. God has a plan, and he’s not going to send me anything that I can’t handle.

Rain often seems to come when I need it the most, as if God is reaching out to comfort me. Once, as I was walking out of a disappointing audition, it started to rain. I walked for about half a mile, thinking about what had just happened. I realized that it didn’t matter. I knew somehow that it was for the best. I turned my face to the sky and said, “It’s alright, God. I understand. I don’t need the rain anymore.” I swear to you, the rain stopped instantly, just as quickly as it had started. I started to laugh. I laughed until I could taste my tears. (In case you wondered, I was cast in that show in a role I’d never pictured myself in. It turned out to be a perfect fit.)

Unfortunately, it isn’t supposed to rain this week. As much as I would like to be drenched by it, I might not even get a drizzle. I’ll probably be fine without it. Then again, it’s Chicago, so who knows?

It just occurred to me how strange it is that someone called “Sunshine” should be so in love with the rain…

May you learn that tears and rain are signs that laughter and sunshine are ahead.

Much love,

~A~

P.S. The title is taken from a line from The Tragedy of Macbeth ("a little water clears us of this deed" ~ Lady M), in case any of my fellow Shakespeare geeks are reading.

Social Awareness

A friend of mine recently mentioned that she has two very close friends whom she met at different times in her life. They each know a completely different side of her, and yet, they both like her anyway. Would they still like her if they knew the other side?

I become a different form of myself depending on whom I’m around. I think everyone does it, to some extent. I think that part of why we alter our behavior based on the company we keep has to do with expectations from others. If you’re the “funny” one in the group, maybe you go out of your way to keep that title, as though you’ll somehow fail if you don’t live up to it. It's too much pressure trying to be "the sweet girl", "the funny girl", "the smart girl", "the cute girl", and "the quirky girl" simultaneously. I am different things to different people, and it is simply not possible for all of them to be visible at once. They're all a part of me, but I have to juggle them. Otherwise, I won't know who I am anymore.


Or if you have a label you dislike, such as the one who is undependable, maybe you fight against it with every thread of your consciousness.

I have, in the past, dealt with some labels I didn’t love. At one point, I was known as the one who was always late, which was a title I rightly deserved when it was assigned to me. I worked hard to become more punctual and reliable, but the label stuck. In fact, people continued to mention it because they found it amusing that I became irritated (I’ve already mentioned that I don’t react well to teasing).

I also had one stigma attached to me that I never really understood. For whatever reason, someone decided that I had a habit of exaggerating, and everyone else seemed to go along with it. I don’t believe that I exaggerate any more than anyone else does. Nonetheless, that was one label that I couldn’t shake. How can you prove that you’re not habitually embellishing things? People stopped taking anything I said seriously. I felt like Cassandra, the Greek prophetess of doom whose curse from the Gods was that no one ever believed her, no matter how adamant she was that what she said was the truth. It was an incredibly frustrating thing for me to deal with.

I was once brought into a group of people because I had one close friend in the bunch. One day, they were all discussing which character from the television show Friends each of them most closely resembled personality-wise. They determined that the person who was my link to the clique was their Chandler. And then I overheard one of them whisper that I must be Janice, because everyone hated me except Chandler (If you're not familiar with Friends, Janice was an extremely annoying and grating minor character, and the comparison is in no way flattering).

That was painful. I always want people to like me. I never wanted to be popular in high school, but I did want to be well-liked. I still do. I have this unfortunate need to make a good impression on people. Maybe that’s why I’m such a chameleon in social situations. I always want to be whatever it is that I think other people will like the most.

See, this is part of why I hate dealing with large groups of people. I never know how to handle myself. I’m not sure what behavior is most acceptable. It’s exponentially worse when people I barely know surround me. I end up silently sitting in the corner, sipping a cherry coke, and observing the group dynamic. I rarely participate in group discussions in general, unless I am extraordinarily comfortable with the people around me, and therefore certain of my role within that social setting.

My social anxiety used to be far more suffocating than it is now. In high school, I once was planning to see a movie with a friend. He invited another person, whom at the time I was having difficulty getting along with. To retaliate, I called up a person that my friend had occasional troubles with and invited him along. It should also be noted that our two guests abhorred each other. So there we were, going to see this movie as an incredibly awkward foursome that had to be seated in a strategic order so that everyone would be comfortable and able to avoid conflict. Here’s what I hadn’t foreseen: each of our guests invited guests so that they would feel more comfortable. And then these new tagalongs invited others as well. By the time I got to the movie complex, our twosome-turned-foursome had become a group of 23 people, unable to fit in the same row of the theater (and no, for the record, I am not exaggerating). Too many people. Too large of a group. I couldn’t process it. I couldn’t handle it. I began to hyperventilate. I called my parents from a pay phone to ask them to pick me up and take me home. They didn’t answer. I felt trapped.

Later that year, I was invited to the first of what has now become an annual party known as Thanzgivin’. I was too afraid to go. My friend Annie showed up at my house and said that she was going to the party, and she wasn’t going without me. She and my parents spent about an hour convincing me that I wasn’t going to die. I spent part of that hour crying, I think. Somehow, they managed to talk me into it. Annie and I swung by Boston Market, and walked into the party incredibly late. But we made it. And I survived it. Since then, Annie and I have had a tradition of showing up to Thanzgivin’ together, and always fashionably late. (It just occurred to me that, as my parents now live in another state, I might not be able to attend Thanzgivin’ this year. Calamity! How sad I shall be. It’s sort of a reunion for me, now. A remembrance of the day I took control).

It’s difficult to explain social anxiety to people who have never felt it. In my experience, it’s similar to claustrophobia. I feel powerless, frightened, and dizzy. It feels a bit like the world might cave in at any moment. And there’s too much stimulation. It’s impossible to process the input from it. It makes me want to scream at people to shut up, but I’m too scared to do anything. Sometimes, it helps to sit down, close my eyes, put my hands over my ears, and breath deeply for a bit. But more than anything, it just makes me want to run.

I don’t get to that point nearly as much as I used to. I’m still freaked out by going to Mass in large churches, and by studying in large libraries. Sometimes I feel it when I go to bars or parties. I’m glad it’s mostly gone. I’m going to attend a party this evening, and I’m not terrified. Always a good sign.

I prefer to deal with people in one-on-one or small group situations. This is, in part, due to how overwhelmed I get in large groups. But also, I’m better one-on-one. I never try to impress people. I don’t become self-conscious. I turn into me. Of course, it might be a different me for one person than for another, but it’s still a more honest form of me than you’ll get among a sea of people.

I have one other way of dealing with gatherings of people that I haven’t yet mentioned. On occasion, I let the side of me take over that I enjoy the most: Story-Mode. I love Story-Mode. Usually I only break it out when I’m in a room filled with my parents’ friends, relatives, or some other form of adults. I begin to recount recent events in my life, acting them out, doing impressions of all the people involved. I become the center of attention (which I crave… I like to think that I’m a natural-born performer). I am the entertainment for the evening. Everything that I say is apparently hilarious. I can do no wrong. It’s my one-woman show, filled with improvisation and hysterics. I’ve been doing it since I was in elementary school. The adults always got a kick out of seeing little 5-year-old me dancing around a room and explaining what I was learning at school in great detail. I always thought I’d grow out of it. I assumed that one day, they wouldn’t find it quite as cute. I was wrong. They love it. I go into it at every family gathering even today.

Few of my friends have ever seen me in this rare form. I only go into it under very specific conditions, and I have to be in the right mood with a lot of spare energy (generally it helps if I’m not taking my medication, a la Robin Williams). It’s also difficult to get into it when you’re surrounded by theatre people, as everyone wants to be the center of attention, and you end up fighting to be seen and heard (I don’t like to fight that fight. I’m comfortable resigning myself to a corner, as I said before). The other reason I don’t break it out often is that I worry that my friends will hate it, as it’s a side of me that they’ve never been previously introduced to. Will it change their opinion of me for the worse?

Logically, I know that this is unlikely. If anything, the people who have seen me in Story-Mode seem to enjoy me even more after witnessing it first-hand. I like to think that it’s because I am at my most delightful. I’m completely comfortable. I stop worrying about what people think of me, and I put myself on the table, heart and soul. I stop having social anxiety and start being a social butterfly.

The only other time that I am this free is when I’m dancing. I turn off the critic in my brain, and I just go with it. Anyone who won’t do that while dancing is missing out. It’s an astonishingly joyous experience once you give yourself over to it. I highly recommend it. And I also recommend going out dancing with me. I have a way of rubbing off on people and getting them into the groove in spite of themselves.

Actually, I’ve just now remembered that I have had a couple of friends who knew me in Story-Mode better than they did in other modes. I used to hang out with them in college whenever they needed a study break. After awhile, I felt as though I was their entertainment and they didn’t actually know me as a person. When I tried to be more serious around them, they kept urging me to go back to Story-Mode. I became pretty distant with them after that realization. It’s one thing to make your friends laugh. It’s quite another thing to be used by people as though you were some sort of court jester. I have no desire to revisit that. It’s demeaning. And it reminds me of being in elementary school, mixing the food to get the other kids to like me more. I hate that. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then you should really go back and read this blog from the beginning. It’s a very good place to start. And I’m terribly self-referential in my writing.)

Wow. Just now, as I am writing, I have started judging myself. I glanced over the last couple of paragraphs and decided that my writing is abominable. Is anyone still reading this? I actually deleted a whole paragraph because I deemed it too rotten to be shared (it was also on embarrassing subject matter, but that’s truly not why I deleted it. I think it should be plainly apparent by now that I am rather willing to share embarrassing details on the internet. Which is stupid of me. Anyone could be reading this. Well, let it be).

I sit in perpetual judgment of myself. I have the kind of writing that is probably only interesting to me (and not always, to be perfectly honest). I have the sort of body that looks better in clothes. I have the sort of face that needs makeup to seem balanced. I have the sort of thoughts that only make sense while they’re still in my head. I go through whole days when nothing I am seems quite good enough, and then I rinse and repeat. *sigh* Ah, well. I’m certainly not in Story-Mode now. I’m in Reflective-Mode. (I just made that one up on the spot, but it seems to apply… or perhaps Judgment-Mode?)

I wonder who I’ll be at the party tonight. Will I be the girl in the corner watching as life passes by? Will I be the dancer, ignoring everything but the music? Will I be the court jester, letting jokes and stories flow like water through a sieve? I hope I’m at least a little bit me.

May you live without fear, judgment, or labels.

Much love,

~A~