In My Head

It's where I live. I can't seem, most of the time, to break out of this eggshell. I'm all caught up in here, living my life in a distracted half-gesture. You know what I mean? Like a mom waving her hand distractedly at her son when she's having some dull adult conversation on the phone. That simile just confused me. Am I the mom? The son? The phone? The caller? See what I mean?

What, then, am I?

1. Mother
2. Maker
3. Scientist
4. Lost
5. Distracted

This list could go on forever but it's sort of the worst to listen to people describe themselves, and infinitely more entertaining to watch people be themselves. That's an area in which I excel. I will, to my very dying day, be unerringly myself.

It wasn't always that way. I'm thinking back to many times when I've tried really damn hard to be someone else. I get this visceral sense-memory of a junior high birthday party for a girl named Liberty. Her neighborhood was not-so-great in my child eyes and the fig tree in her front yard was decorated with tissue paper ghosts. She was older so it was a boon to be invited to the party. I remember going to the party and feeling so horrendously out of place that I wanted to climb out of my skin. The people were nice, the kids were friendly. We got some serious MC Hammer dance-offs going, but I just felt completely not myself. I sat on a lava rock planter and tried really really hard not to judge. I thought it was stupid. I didn't want to go inside where the girls were gossiping and trying on womanhood like an over-sized bra. I was more inclined to play legos with the little brother but I knew it wouldn't do at such an esteemed social event.

There was an overweight boy sitting on another planter dressed inexplicably in some kind of Hitler uniform. I guess it must have been a costume party but I don't think I was dressed up. However, given my peculiarities, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to discover that I was dressed as a coal miner (yup, wore it to school), one of the lost boys from Lord of The Flies (favorite novel in 6th grade. wow. healthy), Indiana Jones (always a good way to establish gender identity at this awkward age), or some variation of a cat (simply because there was a pair of cat ears on a headband that resurfaced occasionally throughout my childhood). I decided to strike up conversation with the awkward boy since I always got along well with boys better than girls and he was guaranteed not to have a conversation about periods with me. Going into that talk, I just knew it was going to be terrible.

Now, at this moment maybe you are expecting that this is going to be a lovely story of self-discovery and the prudence of withholding judgement of awkward, pudgy teens because they turn out to be lovely and grow up sensitive and work for Green Peace. Spoiler alert. It's not. I was right. This kid absolutely sucked. He was weird and socially lame, not terribly clever, less than politically astute (hello, Hitler costume), and generally a terrific bore. But this is where it gets weird. I consciously decided, in the middle of our stilted and terrible conversation, to simply not be myself. I decided that I was going to make this awkward, boring kid feel incredibly comfortable by being just like him. When I think back on this idea (I was, what, 12?) it makes me think that maybe I'm a sociopath. It wasn't like I didn't know what I was doing or that I felt uncomfortable and was seeking a friend. I felt bored and looked for an experiment. "Can I convince this kid that I am a boring kindred spirit?" I asked myself. You already have my answer.

I spent the whole evening completely engrossed in this game, to the exclusion of everything else at the party. i didn't try to make friends, I didn't engage with the birthday girl, I didn't use the time to jockey for social advancement. Instead, I decided to wholeheartedly pursue my role as socially awkward self-conscious girl at the party and convince this boy of my identity. The weird thing is that it worked. Completely. It was one of the first experiences I had with the concept  of re-creating identity. I realized that I could be whoever I wanted to be, that identity is a choice. Given the right circumstances, you can chameleon yourself into the good graces of any social situation and IT WORKS BOTH WAYS. You can go up or down the social ladder at whim and people will accept whatever you present to them.

Upon reflection, I recognized a few things:

1. Incipient sociopathic inclinations
2. Incipient scientific inclinations
3. 1 and 2 are definitely not mutually exclusive and may, in fact, covary
4. This might be why I'm so adamantly "me"


All that being said, welcome to the blog.