An Acquaintance Reveals Her Emotional Behavior and I See Myself

So, there’s this woman I know. She’s more acquaintance than friend. I’ll call her Georgie. This is not her real name. Georgie is an…acquired taste. She believes what she believes and believes that it’s the truth. For instance, it doesn’t matter that she doesn’t know if the willow trees alongside the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. were cut down with permission or without. She believes they were cut down because the Orange Fool, as she calls the current President of the United States, doesn’t care if he has permission. So, it makes sense to her that he does whatever he wants, everyone else be damned. 

 

I’ve glimpsed a little of Georgie’s personality, but I was curious to know more. On a recent reconnaissance mission, we meet for an afternoon cocktail at a bar on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. Georgie’s a smoker so we sat outside at a café table after confirming she would be allowed to smoke. The manager on duty brought out an ashtray and gave us both a conspiratorial wink as he placed it in the center of our table. A comrade-in-smoking, I thought to myself. And don’t bombard me in  the comments section for the name and location of this rule-breaking restaurant. I’m not going to tell you.

 

Thankfully, the day we meet up is beautiful. A rare cool summer afternoon. While waiting for our drink—Georgie an Aperol Spritz and me a French 75—Georgie reveals to me, rather freely, that she looks at the world through anger-colored glasses. 

 

“What color is anger?” I ask her. I need her to elaborate.

 

She thinks for a few seconds then a smile relaxes her face. “It’s a murky greenish-gray. Like…a cloudy eye. But it’s crystal clear.” She’s eerily convincing. I nod, internally debating the conundrum of murky and crystal clear. “And sometimes, if I’m particularly angry, there are toxic-yellow flares—brain cataracts, I call them—that obscure my thinking.” I couldn’t help but appreciate her metaphorical prowess.

 

She further explained that she knows she’s probably going to get angry when she reads the current headlines on any given day, admitting that sometimes she reads them for the express purpose of doing just that. She said she rarely reads the articles attached to those headlines, choosing instead to stay uninformed.

 

She then tells me she recently began to feel ignorant. Not from a lack of  higher education. Georgie has a college degree, and I personally wouldn’t consider her ignorant and I tell her so. She clarifies that she feels ignorant due to her lack of knowledge regarding current events in the country, the world, which she avoids by not reading those above-mentioned articles. She does not like feeling stupid, her word not mine, but she has chosen willful ignorance. And you know what, I understand that. Sometimes knowing can wreak havoc with my own anxiety.

 

“I have somehow found comfort in my anger,” she says to me while lighting another Marlboro Light. “I can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t angry. When I wasn’t playing some sort of victim role of my own creation.”

 

I ask Georgie to explain how she how she is playing a victim of her own creation.

 

“I’ve spent a great deal of my life believing that my perceptions about something are the truth.” She takes a drag from the cigarette. It feels like a moment of deliberate pause instead of a need for nicotine. “I don’t have conversations where I seek to understand why someone believes what he believes.” I notice the change in her body language as her hands become more animated. I hope the ashes don’t hit me as she gestures. The cigarette smoke spirals away as she exhales. “I don’t try to understand the why of the differences. I avoid them. Yet I have no problem recounting the actions of this person or that family member to likeminded friends with a woe-is-me tone in my voice.” She shrugs and looks at me matter-of-factly. “It’s victim-y. I can hear it. I can feel it. But I don’t stop doing it.”

 

I ask her to connect the dots between the ignorance and the victimhood. But before she can, a man walks by us playing music loudly on his phone, filling the world with his choice of music. Georgie turns to look at him as he passes, staring like she’s trying to burn a hole through the back of his head. As she returns to me, I can barely discern, “I hate people.”

Georgie fascinates, and annoys, me. But I don’t disagree with her. People are awful. Especially those who think the world belongs to only them and their iPhones.

 

She took a drink then began to connect the dots.

 

“I live with a lot of fear. Fear of the truth especially. I realize anger is a byproduct of that fear. And now I feel like I’m allowing my willful ignorance to mix with the fear and increase my anger exponentially.” Here she turned her face away from me and sighed deeply. “I don’t even know if I’m making sense.” She ashes the cigarette in the ashtray but doesn’t wait for me to respond. She makes eye contact and holds it. “I have lived with my fear and my anger for so long that I’m comfortable there. It’s safe. I know how to navigate the world.” She takes a final drag and presses the cigarette into the ashtray. It lies bent atop a bed of gray ash next to its stubbed and crooked sibling. Her exhale dissipates in my direction.

 

A breeze blows past us in that moment, and the ashes begin to disseminate proving to be as fragile and fleeting as I imagine Georgie to be behind her protective wall.

 

“I think I’m arrogant.”

 

She seems proud of this statement. She takes a drink so I do too. 

 

“I think my opinion is the correct opinion.” She lets that gem sit between us. I was nodding at her, a sign that I was listening. But I will admit I was surprised. I wanted to say Really? or Why? but kept my mouth shut. Thankfully, she went on. “I believe I’m a good person. I think about right and wrong, yet I don’t take the time listen to another person’s point of view nor do I create opportunities to do so.” She contemplated another cigarette but seemed to decide against it. “I struggle with empathy. I’m a rule follower and I don’t understand why people can’t follow the rules. I don’t like living in the gray area. It makes me feel out of control. Being angry and fearful seems black and white to me.” She absentmindedly took the previously avoided cigarette from her black-lacquered cigarette case. “I struggle,” she said, then lit the cigarette. 

 

The conversation with Georgie tapered off after a bit more bitching and moaning, a little more venting. She seemed to have done what she admitted she does. She played the victim. Before she left our table, she gave me a look that all but asked me to console her. I did. 

 

After I paid the bill, the waitress took away the empty glasses and the ashtray. Anyone passing by at that moment would have thought I had been there alone. All traces of Georgie were gone. 

 

I strolled along the sidewalk, contemplating what had been shared, and my thoughts about what I’d heard. My ear locked on the sound of singing. I saw three street performers ahead of me. One with a guitar. There’s a hat on the sidewalk at their feet. The closer I got the clearer the harmonies became. I recognized the lyrics: “I went sky diving / I went Rocky Mountain climbing.” I knew the song—“Live Like You Were Dying” by Tim McGraw. Isn’t it funny how the Universe works? Giving you something you didn’t even know you needed? I hadn’t heard that song in years. And I didn’t stop to listen to it then. But I could still hear the singers belting the chorus as I turned the corner to walk in another direction.

I share some of Georgie’s traits. I can be sullen. Why am I saying, “can be?” I am. And my expectations run high. The political divide also makes me angry. And there are things from my past that I know I should let go of. And my own fears make me crazy. I don’t want to be like Georgie. Sure, I think she’s a good person. But I also think she’s stuck, unable to move forward. Maybe by choice. 

 

The first thing I did when I got home that afternoon was listen to “Live Like You Were Dying.” (If you don’t know the song, give it a listen. I’ve linked it here.) Anyway, I thought about how difficult it must be for Georgie to be Georgie. I thought about my own issues. Silly, most of them. I smiled when the song’s key changed and Tim soared right along with it. I thought about the man in the song choosing to live. Then I sent my sister a text asking if we could talk.

The Armor of Expression

Self-examination is necessary, especially when related to your behavior. It’s the first step toward healing, toward change. I’ve been doing quite a bit of it lately. I’ve listed some of my most powerfully persistent behavioral issues below:

• I’ve always cared what people think about me. It’s a charming trait I inherited from my father. No matter how often I read the adage, “What others think about you is none of your business,” I can’t seem to not care.

• I’ve always had to be put together. You know, hair, clothes, shoes, etc. As consummately composed as possible. Even if I’m going for the disheveled look, it’s perfectly fashioned dishevelment.

• I’ve always striven to be in control. I might be the perfect embodiment of a control freak. Sometimes it takes a lot of deep breathing to hold myself together and maintain the constriction that control demands.

• I’ve never really been able to laugh at myself. An exception to this might be if I were in the presence of people I absolutely trusted. Even then it’s difficult for me and can often takes days after the laughable experience has happened. That’s probably because in my youth other people did the laughing…at me. I was a target of mockery, ridicule.

• I’ve always been my harshest critic. My mistakes are not learning experiences. To me, they are failures. And I’m constantly afraid to fail.

Ugh…my issues exhaust me.

As a child growing up in a conservative, Christian family in a small, conservative, Southern town, I couldn’t present myself in any way other than my idea of perfection. Perfection was my armor. Is my armor. But as you know, perfection doesn’t exist, and it only takes one person to knock you down when you’re feeling good about yourself.

When I was in high school, I had a pair of dress shoes that were trending, totally of the moment. They were concrete gray, sleek and long with a toe that was more pointed than round. They laced up with color coordinated gray laces. They had a brown dress shoe heel. I loved those shoes. But I often got mocked while wearing them.

I remember specifically an incident that happened on a bus ride to school one morning. A student who was a grade, maybe two, behind me in high school called them nurses shoes. They didn’t look like nurses shoes. Nothing about them said “nurse.” But he was a bully and making fun of my shoes was his way of belittling me.

I remember pretending the shoes had been purchased at Macy’s on some mythical trip to New York City. Buying them in New York City sounded more exciting. It was out of the norm. And somehow I thought this fabrication would change his opinion of the shoes…and me. In my mind, it provided a reason for why I would have shoes that were different from every other male, even though they were purchased in the same mall where any of my classmates could have picked up his own pair. The lie I told did nothing to change his opinion.

He took away the joy I felt from wearing those shoes. I let him. I was intimidated—paranoid—every time I wore them after that.

Thirty years later, I connect that experience to my present. I’m broadening the way I express myself every day. I’m very gender expansive, which includes wearing makeup, statement jewelry, and fabulous high heels. And there’s always a little part of me that’s on guard waiting for the bully to mock my shoes and in essence...me.

No matter how much I learn about myself—no matter how much I grow and change—my past affects me every day.

When your early life is lived constantly on guard, that guard remains somewhat raised for the rest of your life. It doesn't matter how strong and courageous and brave you become. It's there. I have to fight my inner demons every day to be proud of who I am, to be brave, to not be ashamed.

I continue to express myself as perfectly as I can because it’s a way for me to maintain control and to protect myself. I was the sissy, the faggot, the queer, the butt of the joke. As a boy in that small, conservative, Southern town, I learned that having a sense of style did nothing but draw attention to me--negative attention. And style wasn’t something for which to be praised. At least not by my peers.

Sometimes the elements we use for expression, e.g. clothes, makeup, shoes, jewelry, etc., are more than mere expressions. Sometimes they are armor.

I was recently struck by the lyric “I’m stronger than I feel” from the Miranda Lambert song “Keeper of the Flame.” I paused to wonder: Am I?

That high school bully should have no power over me now. I mean it’s not like he can make me feel shame for the shoes I like to wear. But I kind of hate him. And honestly, I kind of hate myself for being unable to truly feel the freedom I should feel. If you don’t endure something like that you have no idea what it’s like. You don’t know the shame. You don’t know the fear. You don’t feel the residual effects.

A few days ago I watched the extras on the DVD of the film The Shape Of Water. In one of those extras, the film’s director, Guillermo del Toro, said that he finds three things terrifying: order, certainty, and perfection. He goes on to say that the film’s “Richard Strickland" character represents all three of these things. What struck me about this commentary--as if his words had actually reached from my television screen and slapped me--was that del Toro said of those three things, “They are completely impossible. And they are the torture of our life. ‘Cause no human can be any of them.”

And here I am seeking order and perfection with a bit a certainty thrown in for spice--rigidly trying to hold myself together. Am I merely torturing myself? Let me change that from a question to a statement. I’m torturing myself.

There has to be a change. I know that. I also know it’s not going to be easy. I don’t even know how to begin. But that’s all part of life, right? You figure it out as you go. At least I’m aware, and that’s a step in the right direction. So, I’ve challenged myself to the following:

• Accept that I exist in a world where perfection does not. Therefore, I will never be perfect.
• Believe that mistakes are not failures and give myself the freedom to make them.
• Understand that laughing at myself frees me from the weight of my blunders.
• Trust in myself—I am stronger than I feel.
• Allow vulnerability to pierce my armor.
• Stop being my own bully.

My journey continues...

Words To Yelp At: A Review

As soon as I read the words I felt the flush of heat, and I knew it had colored more than my cheeks. I knew my entire face had gone red. I was embarrassed. I was angry.

I don’t remember the circumstances surrounding the encounter between me and the customer who decided to air her dissatisfaction with it by personally attacking me on Yelp.

The truth is: I have been condescending. And I’m very aware that I can possess, at times, a tone that isn’t always the most cheerful. I own that. But I’ve also been the most helpful man in the room, the man who goes out of his way to get the customer what he wants, the man who has ‘em laughing as they walk out the door.

I’m human. I make mistakes. I have bad days. Don’t we all? But to attack someone, citing his birth defect, in the first line of a Yelp review is nothing short of vicious…and a little Trumpian.

For the record, I don’t hate myself, and I’m not miserable.

Customer service is not the easiest of industries from which to earn a living. People can be difficult. I know. I have been one of those people. Regardless of what transpired between this customer and me, I don’t believe such a nasty personal attack was necessary.

But we live in the social media age of the Trump era. We hold in our hands access to a plethora of apps from which we can post a smear about someone we don’t like on whatever platform we choose. (I myself am guilty of harsh criticism on Twitter toward political views I oppose and toward anti-LGBTQ statements.) We can post a picture of a person who pissed us off and caption it in any degrading way we like. My favorite of the social media mores is the absurd behavior of videoing a fight, an attack, an accident, yet refusing to help the person in need because for some reason the footage is more important than the human being.

I sat quietly at work for most of the day after reading my first known Yelp review. Contemplating. Stewing. This customer did not so much critique my bad customer service as point out my crossed-eye, question my gender, and note my nail polish. She viciously attacked my personal attributes and choice of expression. Was she trying to belittle me or shame me?

The more I contemplated the more I wanted take it all off...right then: the eyeshadow, the mascara, the nail polish. I wanted it gone. I wanted to not be seen. I wanted to hide in the corner. That would be the easy way. That would be me succumbing to safer more comfort-filled tropes. But then I said: No! She doesn’t get to have that much power over me. Her comments were nasty, negative, and hateful. But what can I learn from this? How am I going to react? I am strong and courageous and her opinion of what she saw when she looked at me doesn’t matter. Our transaction may not have gone the way either one of us would’ve liked, and I can learn from that. But she has to look at herself in the mirror every day and know that she lashes out with hate.

Also for the record, I regret that my interaction with this customer was unpleasant enough to make her lash out at me. Clearly I affected her day. Maybe she felt better after posting the review. Who can know? I don’t think we often stop to realize how one human interaction can affect another. An interaction I had had prior to the one I had with her could have soured me for the next few hours...or the rest of the day. And in turn, the interactions she had post me could have impacted those experiences.

Actions may speak louder than words, but words have the power to leave a lasting sting. We should choose them wisely. Of course, we would have to care about their power and their lingering effects, and many of us just...don’t.