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More songs of circles
To recap:
I don't want to be excessively rich, but I resent people who are. I don't want to be famous, but I resent people who are. Actually, I resent the culture that glorifies the rich and the famous more than I do the rich and famous themselves.
What I want is to be noticed. And I want to be not just noticed, but noticed in a good way. Maybe I resent these people because I'm jealous. There is some part of my brain that is convinced of my worthlessness and really, really needs some strong positive attention.
There is another part of my brain that hates the first part for what it perceives as egotism. God, it thinks, you need people to look at you on the street and think you're sexy? What kind of person are you, anyway?
And that feeds the self-loathing.
I believe that my cycle is magnifying itself to intolerable levels because I have been getting more daring with my eccentricities. I have realized I can get away with more than I thought I could. You would think this would be a relief, or a release. It is, but it also turns out to create additional problems. Because the closer I get to what I want, the larger that last gap I will never be able to cross seems.
To put it another way: If you don't win the lottery (and of course you don't), and none of the numbers on your ticket matched at all, you say, "Eh," and toss the thing in the trash. But if all the numbers except the last one matched, you say, "Damn!" and fret for a few minutes on how close you came to being a millionaire.
If I were shaped like Danny DeVito I wouldn't bother with any of this genderflux in the first place. But I am not. It is just barely achievable for me to look sexy on the androgynous, elfin value system which is the only one that matters to me. Just barely. And the few things which stand in my way are all the more massive because there aren't very many of them.
I would blame my self-hatred on abuse, but the thing is, I didn't like myself very much even before my former stepfather put me through three years of the heart of darkness. And I can't blame him for the gender issues. He may have called me many things, but they all related to my brain, not my body. This, too, goes back further than him - although I have to root around carefully in my childhood to find them - a difficult task, since I barely remember my childhood.
Furthermore, I dislike self-analysis of that sort. "Tell me about your childhood" is a recipe for victim-culture and cycles of blame and discussion that do nothing. I am interested in everyone else's past, but not my own. I am only interested in my future. Which is not rosy.
You know, I figured out another problem I have with money? I don't especially want to be rich, but my biological clock says that I'm way overdue to be making a lot of money as a cushion for my retirement. I have no savings. I am terrified of what will happen when I reach my sixties and the world decides there is no place for me, no one will let me work, and I live on dog food. I won't have to worry about my children shunting me off to a nursing home so they can forget about me; with no children, I'd better either have paid off my mortgage at that point or I'll be getting pneumonia in a cardboard box. I figure I have only a few years left to make my mark, and I'm not doing it. This country is hell on the old, unless they're already wealthy by the time they get old. I'm way behind already.
The problem is, I could be making money like that now - but I wouldn't be enjoying myself. And I'd rather enjoy myself while I'm young and most of my body doesn't hurt. Catch-22.
Of course, there's a way to accumulate money without working your fingers to the bone for it. It's called the stock market. But I'm not going there again.
But ... to get back to the main flow of this stream of consciousness ....
Aet noted this morning that
I still do not understand why do you need to know if you look stupid when enjoying yourself.
Because if someone else thinks I look stupid, I will stop enjoying myself. Or, put another way ....
I don't mind bouncing around looking stupid - when I'm alone. When I'm alone I hum to myself, sing off-key, hold dialogues - aloud - from whatever I'm writing, wear extremely ratty but comfortable clothes, bind my hair out of the way in an ugly and geeky ponytail, and in general am mercifully free of any self-awareness whatsoever.
But as soon as other people are present, the picture changes. My behavior gets more guarded, I become more careful about the risks of being a fool. There are several tiers. The first tier is Nonelvis, Marc, and my sister. I no longer worry much about how I look or act around these people. I don't worry what they think of me, and I don't fear any of their possible reactions to me.
The next tier is Nonelvis' sister Judy, Molly Zero, her boyfriend Mark, Karen, my mother, Mary Anne, Rose, and maybe Patrick. These are people where I don't fear their reactions, but I do worry what they think of me.
The third tier encompasses most everybody else that I know in person, including my boss and my co-workers. These are people where I fear their responses and worry what they think.
Friends I have never met, or have only met in passing, are not on the scale. No offense to you nice Aether people, or people I'd like to meet more often like Kymm, but it hasn't become an issue yet. See me in person a couple more times, and believe me, I'll start wondering what you think about me too.
Total and complete strangers, as I have previously noted, are automatically assumed to be The Enemy until proven otherwise. Sometimes all it takes from them is the right kind of smile. But I rarely get those.
Since I am at my most rigid and guarded when surrounded by strangers ... and yet I want to indulge in increasingly more eccentric behavior in public situations ... you can see that I have a problem.
And it gets worse. I realized late last night that the main reason I want to know what _______ really thinks of my gender antics is so that I can stop associating with him/her if he/she has arrived at the "wrong" conclusion.
I have hit the point where I am feeling inclined to write out all parts of my universe that don't see me exactly the way I want to be seen.
The problem is, that would leave me with no universe at all, since so far I'm the only person who sees me the way I want to be seen.
No wonder I'm so testy.
And I don't want to be humored either. If someone tells me that I look cute a certain way or something like that, they had better not set off my BS detector, because if you're telling me what you think I want to hear, I will verbally slap you so hard that our friendship will be beyond repair before either of us has a chance to regret it. I won't be able to help myself. I cannot stand being patronized.
So. I don't want people to tell me if they think I look ridiculous. I don't want people to encourage me even if they do think I look ridiculous. If you don't say anything at all, I'm likely to suspect that you think I look ridiculous. And even if you're completely sincere, I may secretly believe you think I look ridiculous anyway.
No, no, no, you can't win. There's no way to win. The problem is me.
The problem is that I think I look ridiculous.
God. This is developing into one of those days that ends up with, "I think I'll just go live in a cave, it'll be simpler."
Which is just me wanting to write out the universe again.
© Columbine
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