It's no small coincidence that I'm working towards being a literary scholar.... I love when things are much more complex than they seem. I love digging underneath the surface, picking out details that may typically be overlooked, eating up contradictions, and arguing for the multiple ways a text can be interpreted. I also prefer my narratives to be non-teleological; that is, I don't like being told that there's some unified, orderly sense of "truth" I'm supposed to believe. I revel in deconstructionist thought and love teasing out the "warring forces of signification within a text." I believe that meaning is never inherent or natural, and that it's all produced by the discourses that rely on it. This explains why I'm drawn to movies and books that mess with my sensibilities and why I disdain anything heavy-handed that seems to bonk me over the head with its message. Even as a kid, I always wondered what happened after "happily ever after," and never bought into anything that Catholic school taught me. I would read those Choose Your Own Adventure books from the first page to the last, not because I insisted on linearity, but because I liked making the stories double back on themselves. I can't stand when politicians nostalgically refer to some originary moment when an idea was founded, when they say anything that sounds like, "Our founding fathers invented democracy." Messiness is good. Ambiguity makes life interesting.
And yet, in my interpersonal relationships, ambiguity frustrates me to no end, and I can't stand when my analytical efforts offer me no clean, close-ended answers. I can't help but close-read--- I tally up my observations about people, notice what they say and don't say, try to compare what they say with what they do, all in an effort to answer questions like, "Are you a friend I can trust?" and "Are you a man who will love me?" I hate irony, multiplicity, and contradiction when I'm trying to figure people out, and when I can't explain people's actions, my impulse is to make up my own narratives about them. When a friendship turns sour, I try to convince myself that it's probably all for the better-- I say to myself, "We've become two different people, but we'll always remember each other as childhood friends," or "She's working out issues and I cannot help her with them." When a guy no longer wants to see me again and I can't figure out why, I joke about wanting to slap him with a questionnaire: "Are you any or all of the following: a.) still nursing a broken heart, b.) married, c.) a baby daddy, d.) impotent, e.) simply not that into me, or f.) gay? Circle all that apply." If only life were so easy.
But it's not like I want it to be that easy! The fun of getting to know people, of making friends, of dating, of looking for love, is the open-endedness. I genuinely love getting underneath the surface of people and figuring out how they tick. I understand that people are constantly changing, and I'm bound to discover new things about even my closest friends. And part of the thrill of falling in love is the possibility that the other person won't. I often find myself thinking about friends whom I've lost from years past-- I guess it's my subconscious reminding me that they're always a part of me, as I compartmentalize my memories and decide how they've shaped me as a person. I can never be fully sure of what the people in my life mean to me, even within the immediate moment. They are "always already" understood in relation to what's around them and what's between them and me. And I don't much mind that.
This isn't to say that I'm flighty or frivolous in my interpersonal relationships. On the contrary, I'm steadfastly loyal to people who have managed to get underneath my surface, who have succeeded in close-reading my character. It's true, though, that not too many people have. I'm definitely more guarded than for my own good. Even some of my closest friends have never seen me cry. I'll often say I don't care when I really do. I'll often say that I'm fine when I'm not. And, of course, as much as my imagination is bursting with narratives that I've constructed, I'll rarely confront the person in question to confirm or deny my suspicions. No, you'll never see me ask a guy, "So, do you like me or don't you?" And yet, at the same time, you'll also find me exaggerate my emotions-- I can speak very passionately about things that I care about, I take delight in entertaining people, and I'm very good at feigning rage. Unlike people who say, "What you see is what you get," (I'm always suspicious of those people.), I believe that we're all constantly performing.
I know that for all these reasons I'm constantly being misread. I've been accused of letting things that should bother me slide-- It's not that I'm a pushover; I just like to pick my battles. At the same time, I've also been accused of being too emotional-- It's not that I'm a ticking time bomb; I'm just sometimes socially awkward. So maybe because I feel that my appearances don't always correspond to what's going on underneath, I see others with a similar perspective. I'm always reading people, and therefore I'm able to keep people in my heart for much longer than I probably should. While it might take very little for me to decide on an impression of you, it takes a lot for me to want to forget you. Lately, though, the messiness that I used to enjoy has been giving me pause. While reading texts is an intimate act for me, reading people can often create distance. I fear that I've used my curiosity as a defense mechanism of sorts, in that I've prevented the people in my life from creating narratives for me, from determining how I fit into theirs. I've been afraid of just letting things happen without explanation or justification. I've been too focused on constructing narratives that I want, rather ones that I should accept. I've held too tightly to control. So, I've decided, in the spirit of open-endedness, to treat my life, and my self, more as an open book.
