You know, I've come to realize that being entirely insecure and self-conscious requires a high degree of vanity. I've spent my life believing that I'm a humble person easily embarrassed by flattery or any sort of attention at ALL actually, but... I've recently decided that the amount of energy I expend worrying about my faults and bumbling awkwardness actually points to a strong self-centered nature.
For example:
If anyone around me appears to be glum and lost in despair, I have the correct natural response of feeling concern. This is good, (singlewhitefemale). I always try to get the person to talk about what is wrong-- to open up so that maybe by divulging his or her woes the emotional burden can be lightened up a little bit. However, if said person doesn't WANT to talk about it, things start to get a little ugly. Each evasive dodge to my caring inquisitions pokes the crazy in me to come out of hibernation. Uh oh. Why can't he TELL me about it? It must be something I've done. Faaaahck. This is all about ME. I knew it. (I decided to stick with a masculine subject here because, let's face it. If you try to get a girl to talk about her problems, she's not gonna put up much of a fight. **sexism! yeah!!**)
After this delusional mental conclusion, I fish out a fresh quiver of questions to fire at my poor already beaten-down victim, this time armed with the pretense that I am not only the sole person who has caused his misery but also the only one who can fix it. So now the poor guy is dealing with whatever Real Problem Shit is bogging him down AND a maniacal frizzball of guilt wringing her hands at him and frowning brokenheartedly at him with a crazed, off-kilter expression. After prying unsuccessfully for one hundred hours, I then resort to apologizing profusely for... well, ultimately nothing. In response, my weary friend lifts an even wearier mama hen wing and tucks me under his shoulder, reassuring ME that everything is fine and that I have nothing to worry about. At this point I am a frazzled mess, and hey yeah I could use some comforting, so I allow myself to be soothed until my worry wrinkles fade and then I'm laughing and telling the story of The Lunchbuddy Who Locked a Troll in the Closet and Was Feeding Him Skittles, and as the stress dissipates in my bloodstream I'm all sunshine and giggles and forget that the eyes smiling back at me are masks protecting me from Real Life. My friend senses that I have been lulled into a false sense of safety, and he takes this opportunity to bolt like lightning across a dry patch of grass and get the hell out of my pseudo-therapy session.
It is usually at this moment that I realize I done fucked up, son, and that maybe I should have taken myself out of the equation. Just maaaaaaybe.
Another example of this particular vein of vanity is that oftentimes when someone is talking to me about important goings-on, I will be utterly convinced that he or she is staring at how fucked-up my hair or lipstick is. I have interrupted urgent messages to shout Tourette's-style, "WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT MY MOUTH LIKE THAT?!!!" I like to think of this as my "hair-muffs." No matter what you're telling me, I'm not going to hear you because I'm busy trying to see my reflection in the framed photo behind you to see if the shapes of my hair are trying to form sticky-outty alphabets again. A confident person would be a much better listener. If I were full of myself, I would not be worrying that you're standing there ripping apart my appearance with your evil eyes as you tell me about your sick grandmother.
No, the vanity of insecurity is a far more serious affliction than a case of Big Headedness.
I feel that this particular strain of self-consciousness creates an insurmountable distance between myself and other people. We can be sharing the most intimate moment in a passionate bout of love-making as our souls intertwine in the dim bedside lighting... and all I will be thinking about is that from this angle I must have like five hundred chins. I once told an old boyfriend of mine that I would be a much better partner if I had better hair. He laughed it off, but I grinned back at him in a perfect rendition of Jack Nicholson in The Shining because as I said it, I realized how much truth there was behind it. Oh okay, not REALLY. A Brazilian blow-out isn't going to make me a better person. But if I could find a way to shed my tight skin of insecurities I could have more honest, more fulfilling interactions with people because I wouldn't be present in so many capacities and I would be able to just BE in the MOMENT for once. Currently I exist as myself and as my reflection of myself as seen in your eyes by my own imagination at ALL times. I am sure we all walk around with our reflected self-images permanently by our sides, but I've come to realize that some people are just so much BETTER at ignoring... or... accepting? their egos and are able to take the lead in the constant tango step our self-awareness requires. These Lords of Dance are able to fully flesh-out their character and being, unencumbered by the inhibitions of a cruel heckling Jiminy Cricket, and they glitter like bedazzled (vajazzled, anyone?) beacons of hope for the rest of us to rise to our true potentials.
Here in San Luis there is a community FULL of brilliantly kooky and confidently nutty individuals who exude the utmost security and assuredness of self. I believe that is why I am so drawn to the energy here, and even though I miss and love so many people in other locations, I don't yet feel like I've satiated myself from all that this place has to offer.
It has been an interesting month. For whatever reason, everyone I have grown close to here has decided within the last few weeks to verbally share with me what they think of me as a person. I was shocked that no lewd "C" words were thrown in there for good measure and that everyone seemed to have some glorified version of me blocking their view of all the dark and bulky rest of me. For some reason, it filled me with a sense of desperation to know that everyone else's version of (singlewhitefemale) is so different from mine. Like... like maybe no one here knows the true me. Which I suppose doesn't really matter on any List of Important Things, but you know, I'm in the midst of a quarter-life crisis and self-identity is kind of what's led me on my metaphorical journey over a year ago and what I've been writing about the whole time, so let's pretend this is earth-shatteringly monumental.
In a bout of frustrated vulnerability, I appealed to my mother (the one person here who I KNOW knows the "real" me) and threw my conflicting selves into her hands, imploring her to use her talent with artistry to make the edges overlap neatly and soothe my inner unrest. Instead of solving anything, somehow thirty seconds later we were playing Scramble on her iPad (electronic Boggle laced with crack) and clucking like Bantam Sebright girlfriends about dragonfly wings on acorns and such until we couldn't keep our eyes open and it was time to go to bed. Just as I was surrendering myself to another insomniac bout of self-reflection, my mother came in and whispered in the dark directly into my ear my singlemost favorite thing she has ever said to me:
"(singlewhitefemale), you know why everyone thinks you're this great, glorified version of yourself? It's because you are, you stupid bitch."
I think today I'm going to take my ego out into public, set it down on the sidewalk, point at it with a mighty finger, and shout, "GET OVER YOURSELF."
Either that, or I'll just buy a wig.
