Twofer: A Real Post PLUS Retrobruxist Friday 9/28/12

A few words before we Retro it up here. My point with yesterday’s post was not that I think I’m an ogre… an ogra… what’s the feminine of ogre? I don’t think I’m an ogress. I think I’m aight.

And this next part is weird, because from what they tell me, a lot of women experience the opposite, but many times, I’m reassured by what I see in the mirror. [Oh, god, am I going to go here? Shit, might as well.] I generally walk around in my life kind of thinking of myself as a slightly greasy, chubby, waddling Oompa-Loompa with temperamental skin, and when I catch my look in the mirror, I almost always go, “Hey, that’s not so bad!” I mean, I definitely have times when my reflection makes me cringe, but more often than not, it’s a relief. Photos too. I’m weirdly photogenic, which is nice.

Thing is, I want to be the kind of person who sees the above photo and the one of the fat, ugly, stoned skeptic that Jeff took and says, “Psh, neither is reality.”

But the fact is—OH THIS IS SO PATHETIC—I don’t. I look at the above and think maybe someone could love that person, and I look at Jeff’s picture and say, good god,

What I wanted to get across in yesterday’s post was not “Please, everybody, reassure me that I’m beautiful”; it was “I need to stop caring about this superficial bullshit which is not who I am”.

I want to care MORE that I can live through difficulty, write a meaningful story about it, have the courage to get onstage and tell it to 200 strangers, and do it well enough that the audience is moved and the judges think it’s the best story of the night, and LESS about the fact that Jeff took a picture of me from a weird angle, which made it look like I had some sort of growth on my neck, while I was probably crying and definitely squinting into the bright lights. I can’t control every image that makes it to the internet and every perception that every person has of me. I need to let that go.

Here was my big plan to pull off this caring-about-appropriate-things thing: I asked Jeff for the photo, and I was going to post it on this very blog on the World Wide Web. Alas, he felt so bad about contributing to my distress* that he not only deleted the photo from Facebook; he deleted it completely.

So. The best I can do is try to re-create it for you. It looked a little something like

*Two things: (1) I used those iMessage screenshots without his permission. I am an asshole, and I won’t do that again (sorry, Jeff!); (2) he was nothing but lovely during the whole situation and really believed that he was honoring me and my story with the photo; and—OK, three things—(3) just so we’re clear, as depressed as I’ve been in my life, I’ve never, ever contemplated suicide. The whole bit about offing myself was pure histrionics for comedy purposes, but suicide is not funny, and I won’t joke about it anymore.

On to the Retro!

Three years ago, I was trying to teach my students show-don’t-tell. It’s still the hardest thing in the world to teach.

Redford was already 18 months old two years ago, but he was my baby. Still is.

I hosted the Monti StorySLAM for the first time one year ago. Crazypants. I can’t believe that was a year ago.

Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.