Canning What They Do

Don’t be afraid of your anger.

I think my writing here can sometimes seem like it’s about a desperate search for a boyfriend, but what it’s really about is a search for self-mastery. I don’t know or understand myself at all, and I feel that more and more each day, when I should actually be feeling comfortable and growing into myself. Each interaction should be a chance to fail upwards, but instead, I fail into a place of deep sadness, fall away back into my solitude, feel so empty, unconnected, untethered. These little kinships should be bringing me closer to humanity, not making me feel increasingly disconnected from all of it. 

I walk to my dates, and homeless men accost me, wink, holler, tell me about my shoes or my outfit. Then I get to where I’m going, and I feel tiny, unmoored, ignored. An iPhone and a watch are much more interesting than anything I have to say, and I get left with a cursory goodbye that clearly indicates this is the beginning and end of the interaction. Then it’s back to my house, more yelling, more “hey girl,” more chatter. The mix of fear and disinterest, of feeling the other person’s boredom on the date and feigning my own cultivated boredom on the street, feels so toxic. It’s a potent reminder that I’m being judged every second of the day, because I am. 

I don’t feel like a body. I don’t feel like the clothes that body wears. I don’t even really sometimes feel like the words that come out of my mouth. I feel like my mind and what I think and what I feel. In my house, I can be all of those things; with my friends, I can be all of those things. But outside, I’m everyone’s business, whether they decide to verbalize it or not. And I. Hate. It. 

I try to look at the first two panels of this comic a lot, but it doesn’t make the feeling go away. There’s a lot of hurt and anger in there. And sometimes, just when I feel free, I get reminded of what I am and what I’m doing again, and I crash back down to Earth, hard. 

I feel so cramped inside of myself, like my soul is just this tangle of kudzu about to burst out of my body.