People are nice to me and my reaction isn't pleasure, appreciation, or even embarrassment. Nope, I become utterly baffled. If you think that sounds odd, try living with it.
It all seems to have started with the advent of the prosthetic eyes. Suddenly total strangers were doing weird things like not freaking out, not ignoring me, and even (gasp) being friendly. Coming away from a cafe counter, I might actually be happy instead of cringing. Once I even think I got special treatment not because I'm disabled but because the man was flirting with me. With that one, the earth shifted on its axis and I felt the ground move.
After years of being treated in a certain manner, I honestly have no idea how to assess what is happening. This might seem like a thing to appreciate given that I complain constantly about my frustration with people's less than stellar behavior. Maybe I'm distrustful by nature, but when people behave in inexplicable ways, I start to fret. What am I missing? . Will it last? If I don't understand it, how do I know everything will be alright?
I am expert at dissecting other's odd behavior able to discern nuances and glean motivation from an initial greeting lasting ten seconds. Vast experience has honed my instincts and I am able to know how I should react. When a person holds out their hand and I don't realize it until someone tells me, I know to make a joke to put the other person at ease. If wait staff speaks to my companion about me, I easily insert myself into the conversation in a way that forces the person to interact with me. These are reactions akin to the reflexive jerk of a knee when tapped by a rubber hammer.
In the past, pleasant behavior was easy for me to decipher: the person had prior experience with disabled folks, excellent customer service training, wanted to be friends, and/or rarely wished for something romantic. Everything was simple and clear because it happened less often and the behavior only had a handful of possible motivations.
In contrast, now people are friendly just because. Lacking experience with such behavior, I repeatedly try to fit actions into the categories I know but without success. Instead of letting the puzzle go unsolved, I keep going over it in my mind trying to find some clue I've overlooked.
Do you know how frustrating it can be to not understand why someone is being nice? I guess many of you are used to people behaving in such a manner. Maybe it's how you would feel if people suddenly began gazing over your right shoulder whenever they spoke to you. It feels that arbitrary and inexplicable.
I hope for the sake of my sanity that I learn to read niceness with the skill I can apply to odd behavior. Unfortunately that knowledge took years to acquire and I don't have the patience for that prolonged process again. I also lack the brashness of an early twentysomething that allowed me to directly ask people why they did what they did. I think I need a native guide or something. Volunteers?
Showing posts with label eyes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eyes. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Getting My Mad On
For the past two weeks, I have been trying to avoid the terrifying thought that the last dose of anesthesia zapped the writing part of my brain. The mechanics were possible with words forming sentences and sentences becoming paragraphs, but the unnamable quality making words into more than the sum of their parts was beyond me. Fortunately, as the past tense indicates, I got my mojo back. In the middle of a concert.
I should probably thank the musician who caused me to lose my temper waking the writing part of my brain from its slumber, but I'm not sure it would have the desired results. "Time after time, I have heard you put down your looks and while I assumed you were probably making it seem worse than the reality, I concluded you were probably of average looks. Then my friend informed me that you are adorable. I sort of lost my temper which finally woke up the writing part of my brain that I thought had gone into a permanent coma. Thank you so much for helping me get it back." Yeah, that would backfire.
On the surface, my anger seems simple to explain. This man puts himself down in order to get positive feedback from others. Immature, but he's twenty-seven and male, so it's understandable. The fact that he is making people feel sorry for him reinforcing our society's obsession with appearance equally justifies my anger, but also doesn't quite cover it.
No, I got my mad on because he seemingly hates his body more than I dislike mine with far less reason. Every day in a myriad of ways I am told that how I look is unacceptable. I invested and continue to invest a great deal of time and energy in counteracting that message. In the past year, circumstances have forced me to integrate loss of eyes and the advent of prosthetics into my body image and I can even see the light at the end of that tunnel. I work my backside off to have feelings about my body separate from what I'm told to think. The effort is completely worth it because most of the time I walk through life happy with myself.
Then there's this adorable twenty-seven-year-old who referred to himself as ugly. How ungrateful and lazy bringing new meaning to the term 'self-deprecating.' I truly would like to shake some positive body image into him. Jump up and down until he understands what he has and starts valuing it.
Please don't misunderstand. This isn't about one of us having it 'better' or 'worse' than the other. Simply put, I am proof that you don't have to accept societal beliefs about appearance. Why, then, is he doing it? For that matter, why does most of the human race do it?
Maybe I'm incredibly fortunate to have lived at the edge of socially acceptable appearance. It allowed me to clearly perceive the subjectivity of our standards of beauty and how they are imparted to us. Then again, there are tons of people who also inhabit that extreme edge and they pursue changing their appearance with single-minded determination. Perhaps the combination of blind and unusual looks offers the answer. Whatever the case, I am truly lucky to have found a way to not hate my body.
Back to the musician. What can I say to someone like him? Offering my own experience up as an example of "It can be different" would probably engender pity not elucidation. Telling him he's adorable would simply re-enforce his behavior of putting himself down.
Guess I'm stuck listening to his put-downs and offering up prayers to whatever higher power is out there that he one day gets it, puts the sentiments into a song, and changes the world by playing it everywhere.
I should probably thank the musician who caused me to lose my temper waking the writing part of my brain from its slumber, but I'm not sure it would have the desired results. "Time after time, I have heard you put down your looks and while I assumed you were probably making it seem worse than the reality, I concluded you were probably of average looks. Then my friend informed me that you are adorable. I sort of lost my temper which finally woke up the writing part of my brain that I thought had gone into a permanent coma. Thank you so much for helping me get it back." Yeah, that would backfire.
On the surface, my anger seems simple to explain. This man puts himself down in order to get positive feedback from others. Immature, but he's twenty-seven and male, so it's understandable. The fact that he is making people feel sorry for him reinforcing our society's obsession with appearance equally justifies my anger, but also doesn't quite cover it.
No, I got my mad on because he seemingly hates his body more than I dislike mine with far less reason. Every day in a myriad of ways I am told that how I look is unacceptable. I invested and continue to invest a great deal of time and energy in counteracting that message. In the past year, circumstances have forced me to integrate loss of eyes and the advent of prosthetics into my body image and I can even see the light at the end of that tunnel. I work my backside off to have feelings about my body separate from what I'm told to think. The effort is completely worth it because most of the time I walk through life happy with myself.
Then there's this adorable twenty-seven-year-old who referred to himself as ugly. How ungrateful and lazy bringing new meaning to the term 'self-deprecating.' I truly would like to shake some positive body image into him. Jump up and down until he understands what he has and starts valuing it.
Please don't misunderstand. This isn't about one of us having it 'better' or 'worse' than the other. Simply put, I am proof that you don't have to accept societal beliefs about appearance. Why, then, is he doing it? For that matter, why does most of the human race do it?
Maybe I'm incredibly fortunate to have lived at the edge of socially acceptable appearance. It allowed me to clearly perceive the subjectivity of our standards of beauty and how they are imparted to us. Then again, there are tons of people who also inhabit that extreme edge and they pursue changing their appearance with single-minded determination. Perhaps the combination of blind and unusual looks offers the answer. Whatever the case, I am truly lucky to have found a way to not hate my body.
Back to the musician. What can I say to someone like him? Offering my own experience up as an example of "It can be different" would probably engender pity not elucidation. Telling him he's adorable would simply re-enforce his behavior of putting himself down.
Guess I'm stuck listening to his put-downs and offering up prayers to whatever higher power is out there that he one day gets it, puts the sentiments into a song, and changes the world by playing it everywhere.
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