moments of connection
I've had a couple cool moments with total strangers in the last few days. And since I come on here and whine about completely rude strangers mistaking my gender or my sexuality or both, I figured it was time for a balancing entry.
The other day I went to Quizno's for lunch. It was lunchtime, so it was a little busy, so as I was waiting in line I was just watching the employees (being a vegetarian is great because you only ever have two choices. Reading the menu takes like three minutes). There was one person who, I admit, I couldn't tell if per was male, female, or somewhere in between. Per had buzzed hair, piercings, flat chest, nondescript voice. I didn't see per look at me, but as I approached the counter to order, I caught half a glimpse of the familiar "What are you?" look (yep, even us androgyneous souls do it to). Then I saw per's nametag. "Meg." At the same moment, I said, "Hi, how are you?" or some such. My voice easily identifies me as a girl even if my hair doesn't. So we both had the epiphany at the same moment--I could see it in her eyes and I bet she could see it in mine. Except it wasn't a "Ahh, NOW I know which box to put you in," moment, it was a "I bet you get a lot of the same shit I do! Let's be friends!" look. Just half a second, then it was gone. But it was a cool moment.
The other one was this evening. I was listening to a man talk about his personal experience studying martial arts. He pretty much only said when he'd started, that he'd dropped out, that he got back in and now he's working for his 3rd degree black belt and teaching classes. But there were little allusions that somewhere along the way, I don't know the hows or the whys or the nature of it, this guy had been through hell. You can sorta tell--you learn this casual way of referring to it, but if you listen between the words, you can more or less hear them say that their life was ripped apart. (Only people who have gone through putting their lives back together seem to talk this way. People who are in the middle of it go into it in much more detail when they're talking about it, if they're ones to talk about it at all). Ah ha, I thought, a kindred spirit. I bet we'd have a lot to talk about if we ever sat down to it. Except we never will. Partly because we are, and will likely remain, strangers. And partly because when people move on from that fractured sense of life, it's very hard to go back and talk about it, because you lose the vocabulary to describe it. It doesn't seem necessary to talk about it anymore, unless I'm trying to explain why I'm still insecure about certain things or why seemingly inconsequential things will, without warning, turn me into a raging angry crazy person. My mindset now differs galactically from my mindset of four years ago, and while I would hope I've held on to the lessons I learned from it, and that I can sympathize with those going through something similar now (or, at the very least, have the wisdom to recognize when nothing in my experience can help me relate to someone who's going through their own shit), it's very hard to describe or even remember the mindset. It was interesting to recognize that in another.
The other day I went to Quizno's for lunch. It was lunchtime, so it was a little busy, so as I was waiting in line I was just watching the employees (being a vegetarian is great because you only ever have two choices. Reading the menu takes like three minutes). There was one person who, I admit, I couldn't tell if per was male, female, or somewhere in between. Per had buzzed hair, piercings, flat chest, nondescript voice. I didn't see per look at me, but as I approached the counter to order, I caught half a glimpse of the familiar "What are you?" look (yep, even us androgyneous souls do it to). Then I saw per's nametag. "Meg." At the same moment, I said, "Hi, how are you?" or some such. My voice easily identifies me as a girl even if my hair doesn't. So we both had the epiphany at the same moment--I could see it in her eyes and I bet she could see it in mine. Except it wasn't a "Ahh, NOW I know which box to put you in," moment, it was a "I bet you get a lot of the same shit I do! Let's be friends!" look. Just half a second, then it was gone. But it was a cool moment.
The other one was this evening. I was listening to a man talk about his personal experience studying martial arts. He pretty much only said when he'd started, that he'd dropped out, that he got back in and now he's working for his 3rd degree black belt and teaching classes. But there were little allusions that somewhere along the way, I don't know the hows or the whys or the nature of it, this guy had been through hell. You can sorta tell--you learn this casual way of referring to it, but if you listen between the words, you can more or less hear them say that their life was ripped apart. (Only people who have gone through putting their lives back together seem to talk this way. People who are in the middle of it go into it in much more detail when they're talking about it, if they're ones to talk about it at all). Ah ha, I thought, a kindred spirit. I bet we'd have a lot to talk about if we ever sat down to it. Except we never will. Partly because we are, and will likely remain, strangers. And partly because when people move on from that fractured sense of life, it's very hard to go back and talk about it, because you lose the vocabulary to describe it. It doesn't seem necessary to talk about it anymore, unless I'm trying to explain why I'm still insecure about certain things or why seemingly inconsequential things will, without warning, turn me into a raging angry crazy person. My mindset now differs galactically from my mindset of four years ago, and while I would hope I've held on to the lessons I learned from it, and that I can sympathize with those going through something similar now (or, at the very least, have the wisdom to recognize when nothing in my experience can help me relate to someone who's going through their own shit), it's very hard to describe or even remember the mindset. It was interesting to recognize that in another.