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 7- Where to, Lady?

Day 7. I’ll give you yet another topic. Where you are in your life vs. where you thought you would be at this point. Discuss…(That only worked if you read it in Mike Myers’ Linda Richman, Coffee Talk voice but that’s how I keep reading them now!) So…the Where Are They Now special of the 30 day challenge…

It’s kind of hard to say where I thought I’d be but I know I’m way far off course. I named this blog Tangent Off the Lifeline for a reason…My mind has changed so many times over the years I mean, I couldn’t even pick a major in college. For a while I wanted to make films, for a while I wanted to paint, and I loved photography like nothing else…I still do. I have a passion for creating the weirdness I see in my head and making it tangible so that other people can experience it, therefore I also love to write and saw that as a possible future (preferably on the moors of England in a corset, but that’s another, very long, story). I wanted to study marine biology and then had a real serious push towards meteorology for a while and pictured myself in Washington state studying another passion, lightning. I love storms. I more than love storms which is ironic for someone who lives in a spot where there are hardly any. There’s a real feeling that I’m not where I’m supposed to be…

Most of the time when I was younger, I pictured myself at this age, living in a house or a little cottage with a dog, a fireplace, a mantle and a big library, maybe a roommate, and doing one or a few of those things listed above living sort of carefree. I thought by now I would be in on the joke and have my life in order. I would understand the talk about escrow, trading, and finances and it would somehow hold my interest now. I would be nodding with the best of them. I would be secure and set up. I would have complicated taxes. I would own property and be at least a moderate success in my occupation of choice. But then a guy came along. I didn’t see that coming. I never did.

I was a fat kid… or I was told I was. Looking back, it wasn’t true, but it became my identity and became true so I just always expected that I’d be alone. I certainly never expected to get married and never in a million years would I expect to be a mother. I never wanted to be. The thought of children made my face curl into an expression you’d expect to see on someone who’d just walked past last night’s dorm party bathroom. I wasn’t into it.

On top of that, I never thought I’d ever be divorced. A single mother? What? Never.For the past several years I’ve been swimming in uncharted waters, shark infested, without a life-jacket. It’s not bad, it’s just…different and a little scary. (Now, no worries, I really do like my kid, actually I like him more than anything ever in the universe  that was or will be *sniff*  getting a tissue *sniff* ok…) As hard as it all was and is, I can see it now as necessary change that I wouldn’t have undertaken otherwise. I sort of see my marriage as a brief hiatus from myself. I stopped my studies, I stopped my interests. I stopped everything for so long, even after it ended out of grief and shock that I lost myself all over again.

I ended up in a town I don’t particularly like. My family moved here from the city a while ago. I came to live with them after the fallout. I stayed not knowing what to do with myself. I made roots. I have a job, an apartment, the kid has his school and his friends. It’s…ok.

Ok isn’t really cutting it though. Ok isn’t living. OK has been slowly making me fall apart.

It’s taken a long time for me to get here but I really feel like now is another one of those crossroads moments; a moment to choose my beach instead of letting life dump me on whatever heap it decides on. It’s that movement that really affects change, like Frances Mays buying her Tuscan villa and finding the rest of her life…

So I’ve decided to not give up on my dreams. I wrote my book. I’ve decided to take pictures again. I’ve applied for my passport so that I can finally make it to Britain to write my next book (I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but I’m getting there!). I’m doing the things that bring me back to life. I want to see where it takes me one small step at a time. You never do know what can happen. One day you look up and you’ve come so much farther than the amount of steps you’ve counted and you find yourself in a whole new place.That’s what I’m hoping for. I’m not quite sure where we’ll end up, but it’s an exciting idea. It’s the sunrise of a new day and so far it’s looking like butter…sorry…like butta!

Day 5 – Uh, not really.

Today’s blogging challenge topic: The biggest misconception you think people have about single life. You know, when I started this challenge, I read through the questions, and while some of them seemed to make me think, I thought I knew where I was going in most cases. Today for example. I had an answer when I read the question, but like most of these so far, the real answer has come sneaking up on me like every one of my kid’s school projects.

I alluded to what I thought it was back on day one, that people assume there’s something wrong with you, but honestly there are so many, and so many that cancel each other out. There’s the idea that yes, indeed there’s something wrong in your old noggin that keeps you from “holding on to a man” (or woman) or some bad habit like being a serial cheater, a gold digger, cold-hearted…or, you know, an axe murderer… or whatever the case may be. There are others like maybe a lack of commitment on your part, a deep-seeded insecurity, attachment to your parent or pet, or unconscious issue that just makes you less than marriage material. The “Flawed” Theory. This can also be thought of as The “Crazy” Theory.

Then there’s the idea that single people are mad party animals who go out every night and lack any form of stability and quite probably go home with a different person every night (the misconception I think most married folk envy). Somewhere in her head your dear Aunt Martha believes that you’re sneaking out to a rave, wearing something indecent that should only see the light of night on Halloween, and snorting something that she takes for her angina. The “Party Animal” Theory, aka The “Player” Theory.

And there’s the one that I’m going with. Now, this one I think is the most insidious because up until the past few days, I believed it myself. That’s right folks, I fell for it. It’s the one that says that if you’re single, you’re miserable and lonely. The lonely single watching tv crying into their Lean Cuisine or Pizza for One. The image I’ve held forever is from one of my favorite films, Hitchcock’s Rear Window. One of the neighbors that Jimmy Stewart spies on through his lens is one he dubs Miss Lonely Hearts. She’s a single woman who dines alone pretending that her prince charming is across the table from her. She laughs, she dances, she makes interesting conversation. She acts as if he’s there. When she ends up with a real date, the guy turns out to be a cad. (Yes, I said cad!) She slaps him and cries and goes back to the man of her dreams in her dreams. This is the circle of disappointment I’d convinced myself life as a single woman was bound to be.  The “Lonely Hearts” Theory.

The other night when I realized that I felt more free than lonely, that misconception came crashing down. Suddenly I didn’t feel bad. I didn’t feel the need to need. I looked around and realized that I knew people that lived quite happily alone and that I could have been one of them all this time if I hadn’t been so busy making myself miserable pining for what I didn’t have instead of being more grateful for what I did have. I could be happy enjoying my own company. I didn’t have to buy into the idea that single meant lonely. It doesn’t.

Now some of these may be true for some single people and most likely more than a few, after all, clichés are clichés for a reason, but as a single mother I can tell you that I can afford to be neither the party animal, unstable or completely crazy. I just happen to be on my own.

I’ve seen my fair share of crappy relationships, silent relationships, faked relationships, abusive relationships, and episodes of All in the Family to know that everybody coupled isn’t necessarily living in bliss. Being single can mean that I don’t want to be in one of those. I want to be appreciated. I want to be paid a little attention, actually way more than a little. I want to be listened to, respected, and missed when I’m not around. I will settle for no less than that because I would do no less for the other person. Being single simply means that I have not yet found someone willing to do the same for me. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, or anything to misconstrue.