She Asked Me With Her Eyes to Ask Again, Hunggan

There is a saying in Chamoru, "mungga masse, anggen ti ya-mu makasse." Don't tease, if you don't like to be teased. It is fairly simple and straightforward, but it is always funny when you find someone who can't handle some of their own medicine, or who has trouble hearing the truth of themselves that their teasing or their negative behavior is meant to hide. That is one of the main reasons that people engage in that type of behavior. Is so that no one will look at me with critical, judging or penetrating eyes, if I keep everyone looking at the faults in someone else. 

I have always tried to keep myself very distant from superficial people like that. I don't mind it if people are shallow or superficial in general, but I don't want those types of people close to me by any means. But in my dating life, sometimes people slip through the cracks. Often times there are things that I'll see in someone, or at least think I see in someone, but they may not see it or may not want to acknowledge it. So I will feel drawn to someone because of what I feel they are in one way, but they may fight to the death to not have anyone, even the person that they've committed themselves to in a relationship, be able to recognize. 

I wrote about this a few months ago, while reflecting on a relationship I had with someone who enjoyed reading a great deal. It gave her alot pleasure and I recognized it and was attracted to it. But her social sense of self was that, that part of her was geeky, was not normal and not good and that because none of her friends enjoyed reading, it couldn't be something she really shared with others. The more I tried to tell her that it was ok, that she didn't have to close off this part of herself to me, I wanted to get to know that part of her more, the more she wanted to hide and distance herself. 

As we learn from some versions of psychoanalysis and their particular definition of "fantasy" the resistances makes sense. A fantasy in this sense isn't the pleasurable imaginary scene we usually consider. the fantasy is instead a structure misbelief or misrecognition, that may actually be painful or harmful or problematic, but nonetheless provides a sense of stability to someone. If for example, someone has built up their identity that this part of me must exist in a particular context only, then there will be a potentially irrational resistance for fear of the dissolution of the self. I, as I know it, will disappear if this part of me, even if it causes me grief or fear or pain, is not protect in the way it persists now. 

As I was reflecting recently, I was reminded of this woman I dated for a very short period. She was incredibly superficial, it was as you could imagine, written in her hair, on her fingers, on her clothes, everywhere. She oozed a social shallowness which usually repels me. I couldn't imagine her having a deep thought, because everything she showed the world reeked of fads, flavors of the moment, whenever winds shifted and trends followed sail, she was there in a sakman, of such thin quality, is could have glided above the waves. 

I remember following her on social media and noticing something curious and very intriguing. In some of her fashion-related posts, she was adding in text that seemed appropriate in a very general way, but I recognized the text for a particular text. She was mixing into her fairly generic self-empowerment posts, random excerpts from the last chapter of the book Ulysses by James Joyce. I was intrigued by this and ended up scrolling far to long down her Instagram seeing what else I could find. I was very intrigued to see fragment from other texts, hardly pedestrian, and not the usual quotes that you'd find. 

We eventually met for coffee and I could see that she was so much more than what I had judged from her social media. She loved at first the fact that I recognized the books and poems that she was dropping into her posts. I revealed to her that I do the same thing. Some days I'll pick a random book and work to configure a passage from it into something that I write that day. I told her, that no one ever finds my messages of the same type, and I wait for the day when someone does. 

I thought we hit it off really well and she must have too, because we began dating for a time. But after meeting a few times, she began to comment, and sometimes in a very mean way about my appearance. Making fun of the way I dressed, my hair, even my appearance. 

It was a weird sort of heel turn for her. She hadn't shown that at first, but as we seemed to be getting closer and closer, more of this negativity aimed at how I looked and dressed seemed to come out. And while much of it could be dismissed as playful, part of it seemed mean and condescending as well. I decided to respond to her putting down my appearance by dressing up more (at least for my standards). I don't own any expensive or trendy clothes and never well, but I can wear shoes sometimes and wear pants or a shirt with a wrinkly collar. 

But she continued with the condescending mocking about my appearance. To me, it seemed fairly obvious what she was doing. She was feeling pressured by whatever I saw in her, to be smarter or be deeper, to live up to my expectations. She wasn't feeling comfortable with herself for whatever reason, and it didn't have to solely be tied to me, my gaze, my expectations. But she was chafing against her own self-image and focusing the negative attention on me to keep from seeing her. I could tell that she was self-conscious about her own appearance, her body, her clothes, everything. But I tried to put her at ease, repeatedly telling her that those things didn't matter to me. 

Eventually though I got tired of her always giving me problems for the way I looked or dressed. While we were driving home from K-Mart one night, I just told her straight up what I was feeling. I told her that I knew what she was doing. I knew she was self-conscious about her weight, about her body type. About her clothes, about her not sounding smart enough. And that part of why she was always getting on my case was to keep me from seeing her or focusing on her. But I told her, that when she was ready to stop that, she would see that I accept her. I was not asking her to change. I was not saying she was good enough. I found her to be beautiful, intelligent, witty, and fun to be around. I was willing to be more serious about a relationship with her, but that the next step needed to be her accepting that she didn't need to keep pushing me down, so I couldn't see who she was. 

I did not see her again after that for months and months. She ghosted me as is said nowadays. I did run into her again much later and I just smiled and nodded at her, not really sure what to see. She seemed just as uncertain. 

Sometimes I wonder about looking her up to see if she is different, if she is more at ease with herself or with others. I wonder too if she still finds ways to hide messages about herself in things, and I hope that when people find them, she is more open to them.