The Germans have done us a disservice...
...or rather there's a missed opportunity for them in not publishing for an English-speaking audience an idiomatic guide to all the words in German that describe more elaborately detailed ideas. (Perhaps such a lexicon exists in which case I must now set out to find it - I have a list of ideas that I need to learn the appropriately long names for. Like the-thrill-you-feel-when-you-find-something-in-a-home-depot-that-totally-neatly-resolves-some-other-niggling-task-and-for-cheaper. Or the-first-social-occasion-after-a-breakup-when-it's-all-cool-on-the-surface-but-there's-a-secret-sudden-death-turf-war-going-on-underneath. Or why-pretending-to-make-a-candle-flame-flicker-with-your-mind-is-still-fun-even-though-you-know-it's-bullshit)
So, anyway, like many, I often have a wildly conflicted picture of myself. Not mentally, it's entirely unconcerned with any personal qualities, but purely in a physical sense. There's how I'm pretty sure that I look, as presented by the empirical experience of being me, looking at me. There's the subcategories of how I like to think I look when I'm at my best, and how I think I might look when I'm slumming it. There are a whole raft of the subjective viewing experiences of anyone who might look at me through their own filters, etc. And every now and then, there's that niggling fear that maybe how I see myself in mirrors is all a lie, and that I really look like some godforsaken mouth-breathing redneck mutant and that the truth is somewhat too difficult to bear so my mind constructs an illusion of passability to protect itself.
That last is the idea I need a word for, for the "seeing someone you think is repulsive and secretly fearing that you find them as such because you worry that you yourself might truly look like that". Like a doppelgänger, only with a scarily ugly twist.
So if there is a thing like an Eeekgänger, I think I've found mine. Online, thankfully, and far from here, but still. I can only be grateful that upcoming dates and trips will provide more socializing than I've been able to lately, to knock this newfound neurotic overthink out of my brainmeats. Drinking and talking to people = cure for anything. I still want that lexicon though.
So, anyway, like many, I often have a wildly conflicted picture of myself. Not mentally, it's entirely unconcerned with any personal qualities, but purely in a physical sense. There's how I'm pretty sure that I look, as presented by the empirical experience of being me, looking at me. There's the subcategories of how I like to think I look when I'm at my best, and how I think I might look when I'm slumming it. There are a whole raft of the subjective viewing experiences of anyone who might look at me through their own filters, etc. And every now and then, there's that niggling fear that maybe how I see myself in mirrors is all a lie, and that I really look like some godforsaken mouth-breathing redneck mutant and that the truth is somewhat too difficult to bear so my mind constructs an illusion of passability to protect itself.
That last is the idea I need a word for, for the "seeing someone you think is repulsive and secretly fearing that you find them as such because you worry that you yourself might truly look like that". Like a doppelgänger, only with a scarily ugly twist.
So if there is a thing like an Eeekgänger, I think I've found mine. Online, thankfully, and far from here, but still. I can only be grateful that upcoming dates and trips will provide more socializing than I've been able to lately, to knock this newfound neurotic overthink out of my brainmeats. Drinking and talking to people = cure for anything. I still want that lexicon though.