“How do you recognize a person?”
I have bits of conversation that roll around in my head for weeks, months, years. This question has been in my head since the fall.
“How do you recognize a person?”
When we talked about it in November, we thought, when it boils down, it’s the movement of a body. Those predictable and familiar movements.
There is a teenager who keeps lighting things on fire at the library. He is banned for a year. He comes in wearing toques and with his hoodie zipped up to his eyeballs and in new clothes, but I know him every time, I see his movement out of the corner of my eye, call him by his name, remind him to leave, again.
There is a drag queen on the television who I became transfixed by. She laughs the same as my Grandma Bargen, head tilted back, raucous and sporadic. She has the same twinkling, mischievous eyes.
My sister has a way of hugging me that pinches under my left rib. No one has ever held me in the same way. Sometimes she sneaks into my dreams as other people and figures, but I know it’s her for sure from her pinchy grip.
When I pick up my Toronto friend from the airport, I watch for ten, twenty, thirty minutes until I see a figure emerge, too far away to recognize any real thing, still, I think, “It’s her,” and it is her.
How do you recognize a person?
.
and
How does someone become unrecognizable?
.
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I’ve been thinking about that second question for the last 24 hours. The thing is: every person who has “shocked” me, who I was “blindsided” by, who has hurt me deeply, to my core…..in their cruelty I recognized them completely. I said to myself, “Oh, yes, there you are.” I always knew it could happen. I always hoped it wouldn’t.
Another thought: the ones who have hurt/shocked/blindsided me the most are the ones who I refused to truly know. I avoided the recognition. To know them would mean I would have to believe them when they showed me who they are. It is simpler to impart myself as a body double, to fill in the blanks of a person with my own self. It is simpler, of course, until it is not; until they cannot be held safe in the shroud of the false identity I have built for them.
I have been called unrecognizable.
Sometimes I like the shroud too. I wear a mask at work not only because I greet over 1,000 people and their germs every day walking through the library doors, but also because there are enough men who meet me and think they have discovered the Americas. They think they have found their own thing in the most unlikely of places. I have to give them my customer service, but I don’t have to give them my face. Sometimes they whimper, “Why do you wear that?” Sometimes they flatter, “I can tell by the eyes, you’re a beautiful woman.” Always I am glad that when I pass them in the grocery store they can’t be exactly sure if it is their own thing or some other woman.
I like the shroud in dating. I play a new game where I only offer what is asked re: the lore of my life and what makes me interesting and curious and special. I have been burned before by casting my pearls too quickly amongst the dear swine. I used to want to prove worthiness, now I bite my tongue to see if they even care at all. It’s tricky for me. Sometimes things end and I’m amazed at how little that person knows about me. I think of the versions of me that they carry like little bound books. Many books with my name on the cover, not many that I would recognize as myself. It’s my fault. It’s theirs. It’s petty. It’s revealing. I used to coach my husband: “Ask me about my day,” after listening/nodding/mhmming/ohnooing for 45 minutes, for longer. I can’t be a coach anymore. It’s so disappointing when your star player never improves.
A girl I was seeing last year would say, “You’re so sweet, you’re so sweet.” It was the only descriptor she could think of. I told my friend, “I know someone doesn’t know me when all they say is that I am sweet. I am sweet, I’m the sweetest guy out here, but any man at the library (and his mom) can tell you that. I’m also fucking tough as hell.”
I was at my sister’s over Valentine’s day. It was her and the kids and me. I curled up in her bed and held her: a snail and her shell. I wept into the back of her flannel shirt. I was struck by the idea that it only takes one person who knows you all the way through, one person who loves you for who you are, for you to be a human again. She asked me, “Why are you crying?” I said, “I love you so much and I’m so grateful to be loved by you.” (I know, I know, not beating the sweetie allegations here, WHATEVER FIGHT ME)
I think the part of me that hides is a fierce part. I think it’s an angry part. I think it’s a part that says, “Oh, you want me? Come find me, bitch, I dare you.” It’s a hurt part, for sure.
In this latest chapter of finding myself, again, I’ve been asking:
“How do you make a person disappear?”
I have felt disappeared in my life. There is no one I know who has more dramatic reveals of the self than I. I used to be embarrassed; every new understanding is a surprise. Now I recognize myself in the movement it takes to drop the shroud, “Oh, there you are. I have known you, haven’t I?”
I don’t like to say, “I was always here,” in the way that erases a life lived. I do like to say, “I’ve been here always,” in a way that means yes, yes each version, yes each self, yes.
Yes, I went dancing on Saturday with my best friend and a new friend. Yes, I grew up knowing dancing is too sexy and too sinful. Yes, Step Up and every other dance film would make me feel like I was going to explode from inside my body from want. Yes, now I dance at home in the morning and sometimes at night and I repeat, “Thank you thank you thank you,” because I feel such a relief to move, yes.
The therapist says, “Maybe it’s time to start listening to your body,” in a way that is a little bit teasing. I laugh because I am jolly, but I think to myself, “I’ve never had a body until now. I have been disappeared.”
Yes, I had many crushes on many men. Yes, every time they moved to touch me or to have me, I ran. And then I met one who was familiar in his chaos, who felt like the only home I had ever known, who grabbed my arm and held me in place when I tried to run, yes, for eight years, yes, and when I called him a month ago mid-panic attack, he drove to me, yes, and when I told him, “I think I’ve been a lesbian this whole time,” he said, “Oh, yes, there you are,” as the sky changed and the clouds cleared, yes.
He sent me a love poem last night, no, not in that way, yes, in the way that he had watched Dune 2 and told me that its vastness and scale reminded him of me (I haven’t seen Dune 2, but, yes, I like to think of myself as rippling waves of sand).
In a turn of events, I’ve been feeling so beautiful lately, like I’m a shiny, translucent thing. I tell my therapist, “I think it’s self acceptance.”
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How do you recognize a person?
By the way they move.
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How does someone become unrecognizable?
You pretend to not know what you’ve always known.
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How is someone disappeared?
You tell them to hold still and to be quiet.
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How do we reveal ourselves?
Again and again and one more time after that, even.
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Talk soon,
Natahna
The Recommends: Go dancing with your friend(s).
"It’s so disappointing when your star player never improves." WHEW