Day 23: Perception

How do you think other people see you?

When I decided the title, it was so hard not making this a William Castle joke with the Tingler “Percepto!” ad…any excuse to use Vincent Price! But hey, Joan Crawford is more apt here.

You know, judging by the feedback, I’d have to say that people tend to see me a bit like Joan Crawford, erratic, unhappy, impossible to please, and likely to snap at any moment, especially since most people misread my sadness for anger because, well, that’s just my face.

Pain looks like anger. Sadness looks like anger. Ambivalence…you get the picture. I’m still pretty sure that one of my bosses is convinced that I have secret ninja skills and that I may strike at any second, which really cracks me up. I may or may not foster that misconception.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen pictures of me when I’m just sitting normally, not in any particular mood and I do indeed have resting bitch face. I can see how people assume irritability but usually, I’m just deep in thought making up a story about this or that. While I do have big mood shifts, I’m usually focused inward with them, meaning there’s not likely to be a spree with an ax in my future, yay for everyone!

The one thing I will concede to is that I can be kind of depressing. I’ve heard that for a very long time and I think there’s a big perception that I”m like Debbie Downer from Saturday Night Live (Wah wah). I do tend to see the dark side to every situation and that’s not a helpful quality at times. My friend once told me I should have had the job of coming up with the plethora of ways people could die on Six Feet Under because my worst case scenario brain comes up with some doozies to worry about. ( Did I just nick an artery shaving my legs? O~o)

Of course, I can only go by the bit of feedback I get and I can’t assume that it’s been 100% honest. I’ve had tons of people comment that I’m funny as well, but that tends to come and go depending on my outlook. I see a lot of things as funny and laugh to myself all the time. I suppose if I wasn’t so shy or such a neurotic mess  and shared what I was thinking, a lot more people would think I was at least mildly amusing. I’m sure when things die down a bit with what’s going on I’ll find some hilarity in it. I usually do after the fact, especially when looking at what I’ve been acting like. Sort of like Johnny Depp said in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas…you can actually watch yourself behaving in this terrible way but you can’t control it. (This is bat country!)

Another thing I’ve been told time and time again is how calming I am and how consoling, which is very good for the job I do, but my gosh, for an anxiety ridden afore-mentioned neurotic mess, I can’t help but crack up at that one too.  I’ve got Panic Disorder for crying out loud! Get with the program people! I’m, of course, happy to be there for people so that there’s at least something positive I can offer. Being here to help people through tough times and to be a witness to their story is what appealed to me in the job. I’m loving and empathetic but man does it go straight to the heart and stay.

I’d love to be one of those carefree, smiling, laughing, joke-telling people who other people like to be around. I’m probably never going to be a calm person, despite the good sponge thing I can do when the occasion calls for it. I suppose until something radical changes and I start jumping off things for adrenaline’s sake (yeah…never) and screaming “Woo!”, not much will change in the perception department. I’m going for smaller changes to begin with.

If people stick with me over time, I hope the result will be a shift from seeing me as a complete mess to someone they’re happy they stayed with. It’s been a rather tough time and the ones that stick are keepers I think. I’ll swing back again. In the end though, I need to stop worrying so much about what people think and try harder to reflect the truth. Then the right folk find you…like people who get all your jokes and make them right back at you.

Day 20: Expression

How do you usually express yourself?

Let’s see, there’s this, lurking creepily at the cemetery, lurking creepily downtown, lurking…well, I do a lot of creepy lurking. Actually, no, I don’t, not anymore. Ah, the old days. I could also make a bad joke regarding my kid under the heading of breeding monsters, but he’s being a little too sweet today for that. I try to get him in on the self-expression, but so far he’s got his own thing.

Most of my expression now comes with me writing in one form or another, be it here or in my journal (very sporadically) or writing stories that I wish were Gothic. I do create monsters in my stories and actually, in my one finished manuscript I think I came up with some good ones. Oddly enough, most of the things I end up writing are sci-fi or fantasy and God knows I love a good battle scene. I have no idea where any of those things came from. All I want to do is wander the English countryside in a corset writing stories of unquiet souls tormented and longing with some frightening things running through the center of it all. Somewhere some wires got crossed but isn’t that why I’m writing this blog? A lot of my wires have shorts in them, or at least lost their insulation.

Over the years my expression has changed. I began with drawing and painting and then moved on to writing when I  hit the double digits. Later I moved on to music, photography, and graphic art and then came back around to writing. I do a little of all of these depending on where my head is and how much patience I have. I haven’t really painted in years since with my son, it’s a hard thing to get time to do. The same with the self-portrait photography though there’s nothing quite like getting a character out in that cathartic sort of way, by becoming them.

Writing is similar in that way. I can pace and say what they’re saying aloud, figure out how they’re feeling and why they do what they do and in the meantime I get to both become someone else and explore a side of myself and give it voice.  It’s an interesting process.

Today, I was making a piece of art for a friend as a gift. That’s also a nice thing to do. Crafting is a new form of expression for me. I was going to take up knitting to make something hilarious and wonderful for DG, but I really didn’t have the patience for it. I may, if I calm down, give that another try.

For now, I get a wild hair and go with it in whatever form that takes. Maybe I want to do Queen of Hearts makeup and take pictures in that character, maybe I write a story about my dad. It’s all very random but that’s what expression is about to me. You have something that you need to get out and you do, whatever it takes. Sometimes you make something beautiful and sometimes it’s something frightening.

It’s probably the one thing I’d go mad without, creating. Whether it’s lasting or transitory. whatever you make is a reminder to the world that you were here and tells a small bit of your story, your point of view. Everyone deserves to have a piece of themselves seen and understood. There are a million ways to do it, to make your mark. Every one of them is worth your time and energy and who knows, maybe it might even be appreciated by someone who never knew they could do the same thing or how to say something you were able to. It’s all beautiful…the most beautiful thing in the world.