Man In The Mirror in Current Events

I managed to power myself down for a moment. Everything in my head just stopped.

It was like rising up from the dead. More like being reborn. Maybe the best way to describe it is that I rebooted. I did not even do it consciously. All I did was lay in bed. My afternoon nap before class. I did not sleep, however, but when it was time to get up it was like a hypnosis ended. Following that was a little existential crisis.

Who even am I?
What are my priorities?
What am I doing with my life?
Why am I doing what I’m doing?
Why and I thinking what I am thinking?
Why am I feeling what I feeling?

I really fought with myself to get to class. My depression was starting to bubble up. I forced myself to go because I knew how bad it would be if I skipped a class. It is clear that there is something within me that is unrealized that needs to be processed. I think I discovered what is, maybe. It was staring me right in the face. In the mirror. In the front-face camera of my phone. My self-image, I am grieving it. I have to go through all of the stages of grief to come to acceptance. I’m not young and supple anymore. All those years of no selfie control built a confidence that was never meant to last. You can’t have anything unless it is built on truth. My self-image was built on Photoshop. A lot of my worth came from that.

After my world fell apart in 2019, I went inward. It was never the content in my life that made me miserable it was the context. I came out of that a brand new man. For better or for worse. For the better, I like to believe. I became a stranger in my life and it took several years to come back to some resemblance of that person everybody knew me as.

I also managed to get some selfie control. I know that doesn’t sound like a big deal but it is. I built a whole image online. Been at it since MySpace. I didn’t have any real clout but I had a big presence online. It was the perfect place for somebody with crippling social anxiety.

Here I invented the bathroom selfie in 2003

My self-esteem is bruised. All of my insecurities hit me at once. I have no control over any of them. The body ages. I had this meltdown when I was looking at my body in the mirror. When I was looking at my busted hairline in the mirror.

I also discovered that my inner monologue sounds like it is writing in this blog. I recall a time when it was writing status updates. When it was framed like popular memes. I don’t know what to make of it. I think I need to take a break and find my inner voice… if that even makes sense. I have 99 things that I need to do and I won’t start any of it until I write something somewhere. To what end?

I have so much that I need to restructure. I have the privilege of doing so. Was this hypnosis I snapped out of that character of my old self that I was trying to maintain for everybody? For myself? There are a lot of aspects of my old self(s) that I miss. That I wish I could dig up. He wasn’t afraid of conflict. He wasn’t cursed with this level of self-awareness.

My class today was hard. I failed to study on the weekend. I did that intentionally so that I could take a break from life. I reached out to my teacher about tutoring. I am aiming to do that on Friday. I really need to commit to this class. To something, honestly. Just stick to something!

Perhaps this existential crisis came about because I applied for a different position at my work. I’m a girl who needs structure and I’ve had anything but that since my world fell apart four years ago. A full-time position opened up on the store side and I jumped on it. I don’t actually want it but what is a girl to do? There is also one for a department supervisor. I will be giving up my glorious Mon-Fri shift structure. Bye bye 5:30 AM to 2 PM Mon-Fri and hello shift work. This is happening sooner than I wanted it to. I approached my supervisor about if she knew what the score was with my status on her team. When I was hired, we knew it was a temp FT position but she said that they would review at the end of the contract, January. She said that there would be a permanent PT position. I need FT to support myself and she understands. She will talk to her supervisor about it tomorrow. I know they all absolutely like me there and my leaving the team would really be The One That Got Away energy. I already told people on my team about it and they were devastated. The store side, however, they will welcome me with open arms. It will be a huge win for them. Not to toot my own horn.

Talking with Connie about her daughter made me recall what I witnessed with young gay men. It’s something that happens with women but it isn’t easy to see because of culture. When a twink discovers eyeliner for the first time they auto-inflate their ego tenfold. I know that because that is exactly what happened to me. My mother snapped me out of it, thank god. I was a mean & nasty, sassy, gay. I think that conversation cued this whole mess.

The moral of the story is that I need to get my life right by getting myself right. I have to think the right things so that I can feel the right things so that I can do the right things so that I can experience the right things and so that I can get the right results.