8 February 1999: More Contradictions

I'm wearing the infamous suit again, with the hat, earrings of course, and my hair down. Three people at work--different ones than before--have commented on it. At lunch I scampered to the post office to mail CLH's birthday presents and a couple of books I picked up for DEW. Striding past my reflection in windows and mirrored buildings, I realized something about this outfit, this look.

I like it. I like whatever poise it imparts to me. I like that the suit works just so with my figure and that I can wear it with shoes I can walk in. I like that people find some aesthetic pleasure in my appearance; as long as they can do so without invading my personal space. I like my hair falling obediently and its slight bounce as I walk; I like feeling the wind in it.

But I don't like it. It's a grown-up look. Little girls wear their hair down a lot more often than they wear braided chignons, but no child would wear this sort of garment (unless she were Jon-Benét Ramsey). I don't want to look like a little girl, but I don't want to look like a grown-up either. I like big dresses without waists and with skirts I can run in, made of cotton, and sturdy enough that climbing trees won't thrash them.

I don't like that I enjoy this poise. It's such a grown-up conceit. I'm not poised, poise being something you have or have not. I feel like I'm posing about this poise thing. Which means I'm lying, every time I wear it.

I have a hard time being completely forthcoming in these pages out of fear someone, somewhere, will know I'm insecure, dishonest, riddled with guilt and doubt, imperfect. I think I come off as full of myself, or maybe I'm so insecure I just think that so I can hate myself some more, but as much as I don't like seeming vain, I know it's deliberate. It's all an act. Or do I call it an act so I can excuse its being real? Commence circular ignition.

When I started school, I had two main friends: my next-door neighbor Michelle and Vicky whom I met at orientation. After a month or so as I made friends with people for reasons other than geographic or circumstantial happenstance, my friendships with these two began to wane. Toward the end of this first blush, while Michelle and I were talking about popularity in high school, she said she thought I was the sort of popular person who'd had a lot of casual friends and not too many close ones.

I was flabbergasted. I had had no casual friends in my high school--and absolutely no close ones, true enough. I realized that the personality I now projected was nearly polar to my secret, true one. I acted exuberant, forthcoming, active, funny, all of which I indeed was. Did people think therefore that I was self-confident, which I was not?

I know any lack of confidence was due mostly to where and how I grew up. I've had no problem making friends anywhere I've gone outside of Old Lyme, and even in Old Lyme people outside my peer group seemed to like me fine. But still, five years of absolute loneliness took their toll. Before HPV, REB, and EA left, we were together, and I wasn't lonely in my little, disliked, bookish group; after HLV, I was still alone and actively disliked in my day-to-day life but knew I had friends by mail. The intervening five years, however, I consider to be the most influential.

From 12 to 17 is a period most people begin to strike out on their own, away from their parents, and the first step away from parents is the peer group. I had none. I did all my thinking on my own, perching in the Climbing Tree with a book in my lap and my dog investigating the woods below, writing for hours in my diary, biking my daily route through town, shelving books. I talked more with the elderly patrons at PGN than I did with my schoolmates. By the time I went to HLV, I was convinced I'd have to spend my life alone. Learning how wrong I was about that saved my life, maybe. If I had been truly suicidal I probably would have attempted it before my planned date, but I did contemplate it often and the thought of it comforted me: if life ever became too much to bear, here was my way out. I guess I lived such an insular life that I thought it was my only way out: I knew no other, knew I was incapable of any other.

Anyway, at HLV I made friends, and having done so, I returned to my solitary life assured that if I could make it through one more year, I'd be out and away, free and safe. I was still disliked and mocked and what have you, but my classmates' efforts on my behalf no longer bothered me. I was impervious.

With college came my chance to be myself and be liked for it, as at HLV, not for just a week but for four whole years. I was confident of my own likeability and I guess I projected that, leading Michelle to her startling conclusion only a month into my sparkling university career.

And so I was flabbergasted, but also I thought that if Michelle thought that then I was somehow being disloyal to my earlier self. Did likeability and being liked mean I had betrayed all the misery I'd struggled through to become who I was? Life goes on, but does it do so without guilt? The first time I laughed after JPS died, I felt guilty: shouldn't I mourn her forever, and didn't mourning mean not enjoying myself? I knew that people do go on, that humans are usually strong enough to continue past obstacles and grief. Now I had to accept what I knew and practice it. I'll always miss Sagi, JPS, Percy, and BHM, but their deaths didn't require mine in sati--well, at least the two that weren't my responsibility shouldn't. (That's another sidetrack: I didn't cause JPS's death but I voted for it, and no one thinks I caused Percy's death but me.)

Anyway, in the same vein, I fear that to act like an adult now is to betray my child self, to dress attractively or suitably (ha ha) now is to betray my ugly duckling self. I want always to remain aware of the contrast, to give all stages of myself voice in how I now live, and not to forego climbing a tree or skipping along a hallway just because most 30-year-old women don't.

So after the post office I staggered along, scuffling my feet then smiling at the blue sky, back and forth between involuntary disapprobation and deliberate approbation. Today when I go home I am going to put on a big dress, braid my hair straight down my back, go for a skippy walk, hug a few trees, converse with squirrels, and forgive myself for being 30.

(later)

This morning I sought out someone on the other side of the office to ask a question. After my ruminations during lunch I pinned my hair comfortably up again: more comfortable physically and emotionally. Just now the coworker walked past my cube, took a step backward for a better look, and said, "I didn't recognize you with your hair up." I blanched. Overcome with disgust at my wanton conceit, I grinned a sickly grin and said, "Usually people say the opposite." He replied, assuming a dolorous tone but with eyes twinkling, "I was being sarcastic. This morning is when I didn't recognize you."

Oh.