It’s not that I’m narcissistic, though you’d be fooled by the amount of self-taken photography that occupies my hard drive. Writing, photography… it’s a method of discovery.
Who am I?
Do I look the same when I look at myself from outside myself as I do from inside myself? Do I find myself smarter when I read words on paper than said aloud in my head? Am I thinner or prettier when I look at a photo versus looking in the mirror? Am I more kind when I read the words others say about me versus the things that I say about myself? I am not always kind to myself, so maybe I have not yet made friends with myself.
I am stuck with the voice inside my head that, when I look in the mirror says, You look fat today and those dark circles under your eyes are really not doing anything for your look. When are you going to start running again? You’d be so much prettier if your thighs didn’t touch. And your hair looks frizzy. Get a flat iron on that. Stat.
The voice inside my head is neither complimentary nor kind.
I often imagine what life would be like if I could separate the inner Karen from the outer Karen. I’d want to be friends with this girl. Perhaps I would meet myself at a diner at 2pm on a Thursday afternoon. One of me would be seated at a table drinking coffee, a waffle with ice cream and reading a Miranda July book. The other me would walk in the door and see the other self sitting at the table and think, Wow what a great outfit. She has really pretty eyes. I love her lipstick. I’ve been meaning to read that book for a while. I hope, if this new stranger and I talk, that she finds me interesting. Little did I know that I am that girl sitting at the table with the great lipstick, the pretty eyes, and the interesting literature. Because I’ve never looked at myself from the outside.
We’re all so busy absorbing everyone else, when do we find time to absorb ourselves? And when we absorb ourselves, where is the line drawn from being introspective to self-absorbed. Nobody has ever called me self-absorbed to my face, but am sure that someone has thought it. This thought is self-absorbed. I started thinking about myself and falling in love and how now the whole is the sum of the parts, because additional parts were added. Like another person.
It’s so easy to care about only yourself and to become narcissistic and self-absorbed when you only have to think about yourself. I’ve tried to think of others. I tried buying plants, but I always forgot to water them. They don’t have vocal chords, so they could never tell me that they were thirsty until it was too late and a wilted, sad looking basil plant would have to be moved to the dead basil repository also known as the trash. I’d get a pet, but I can’t have anything but a cat in my apartment and I’d really like a dog. After growing up with a hostile mother, I think having something so excited to see me when I come home that it pees on the floor would be good for my self esteem.
All the while-killing basil and not buying dogs, I met a man. And he asked me to be his girlfriend, which is a very scary proposition when you think about it. Sure, it sounds about as frightening as a Thin Mint, but that first commitment begins the path to all of these other steps and stages. Or, as I have become accustomed to, a full stop. I am as good at killing relationships as I am at killing basil. This is not my most remarkable trait. Being in a relationship makes me think outside myself-about someone else’s needs and wants and feelings, and they have quickly become more important than my own. Like following a boyfriend’s band around and giving up yoga teacher certifications and missing friends’ birthdays. It makes me feel humble to know that someone else is important, because we are all important, but when you have lived alone for as long as I have (or as long as I feel like I have, which is, forever) and sometimes angry, the way having your purse stolen by a fast running mad man on the streets of New York would make you feel angry. You feel swept away, surprised, shocked, and helpless. But maybe you had something useless in the purse, like a rotten bologna sandwich and your wallet was in your pocket, so all the robber got was a funky lunch. So maybe you actually won because you no longer have to eat the sandwich you didn’t want and the robber got the purse you didn’t really like anyway.
There’s a point. I’m taking a while to get there.
The in-between phase, the label of girlfriend is so very uncomfortable, like sandpaper on my eyeballs, because everything-the success or the failure- is a matter of time. Miranda July found a way to express this angst in talking about her marriage to her husband.
“So all my time was spent measuring time. While I listened to strangers and tried to patiently have faith in the unknown, I was also wondering how long this would take, and if any of it really mattered…And now that I had vowed to hang out with this man until I died, I also thought a lot about dying. It seemed I had not only married him but also married my eventual death. Before the vows, I might have lived alone, but forever; now I would definitely not be alone and I would definitely die. I had agreed to die, in front of all my family and friends. Brigitte had taken a picture of the very moment: I was smiling, and, understandably, crying.”
And it all makes me feel so very humble.
