The original title of this post was "We can be heroes" but then I thought that my fifteen loyal readers might think it was tacky to capitalize on the untimely passing of a pop icon. I think I was right.
Though, while I'm not writing about David Bowie per se, there's a more than tangential relationship between Bowie and what I'm about to write.
Three things happened this week that made me think about my life (more than I usually do, I guess...). I know I'm a little slow off the mark on my New Year's Resolutions, but I think it's probably smart to have resolve all the time and not just on January 1st each year.
1. David Bowie died of cancer.
2. A dear friend's father died of cancer.
3. I had a huge fight with my boyfriend.
How are these connected? You might not have been asking, but I'm going to tell you anyway.
When I moved to Northern Ontario to start my adult life, I didn't know a soul. Not a single person. I was desperately searching for a boyfriend. I know it's nice to have some romance in your life, but if I reflect on that time in my life, I think I was desperately seeking someone because I wanted to feel connected to my community. My search was ultimately successful, but it was not without its significant speed bumps. It took me several months to make friends (more on that later), but when I did, my friend's father was a great advocate and important navigator of my life in the north. I didn't know him as well as I would have liked, but he directed my community theatre debut - giving me a shot at a lead role with only my say-so that I'd been in the drama club in high school, gave me my first bunch of tomato plants, and always made me feel like I was a person he wanted to chat with if he saw me around town. And from my vantage point, he lived an incredibly rich life most of the time.
Before all of that, I felt like I could die in my apartment and the only reason anyone would think anything was amiss would be my absence at work on Monday morning. If I squint my eyes really tight, I can remember a time in my life when making friends wasn't difficult, but something happened at some point to make breaking the ice in a social gathering wholly terrifying. I sought counselling, and by the grace of several self-confidence worksheets, my peculiar ability to sightread piano music, and one strangely successful unsuccessful e-harmony match-up, I had friends! And for a very long time, I saw myself leading a life similar to the one I imagine was led by my friend's father and that was pretty great, and certainly good enough for me.
And then, five years later, I moved away from my friends and my comfort zone. So, this week, I had a huge fight with my boyfriend. The details don't matter, and we've mostly resolved our argument, so that's nice. But it got pretty edge-of-the-knife at some points. And I thought of the places I could go to cool off and debrief and decompress. I could think of one. And then I felt incredibly lonely.
And it's not like I'm not around people. I'm a champion joiner. Problem is, once I've joined, I live in fear that if I open my mouth to talk to someone I'm going to find that I suffer from some kind of sneak-attack dysphasia and all I can produce is word salad, and I'm going to be that weird girl that nobody likes because she says weird stuff. Instead, I'm pretty sure I come off as that girl who seems stand-offish and unapproachable because she says nothing to anybody and doesn't make eye contact. My modus operandi is to just be "around" and then eventually I've been around so long that everyone just knows that quiet girl who's always "around" and they're comfortable with my "around"-ness. And I'm comfortable with them and I can start to be myself...the one who talks to people and says things other than "Hi. We seem to be in the same place together right now. That's...a thing." (Truthfully, I probably still say shit like that, but it's delightfully awkward when you know me, rather than awkwardly awkward when you don't.) But that takes a long time, and I'm really lonely now. You see my problem here.
So what does David Bowie have to do with all of this? Well...I'm pretty sure that when I'm being "around" girl, even if I'm quiet and stand-offish, I still seem pretty normal. And I guess my fear is that, if I put the real "myself" on display, someone's just going to come out and say "Girl, you're fucking weird, and we don't need your kind here." If I think about it rationally, most of the people I would want to spend time with are probably too polite to say anything like that, and are much more likely to embrace the weirdness. But in situations where I'm afraid I might suddenly come down with a freak case of dysphasia, I'm not really thinking rationally, so I sort of forget that most people are generally polite in most situations. David Bowie was the kind of person who was his real, really weird, self at a time when people were not always polite about who that self was. His appearance was flamboyant and ever-changing and experimental. His music was flamboyant and ever-changing and experimental. His sexual orientation was flamboyant and ever-changing and experimental. He seems to have been amongst the original poster boys for letting your freak flag fly. And nothing about me is as controversial as anything about David Bowie but I'm still incredibly scared that somebody is going to hate one, or some, or all of my weirdnesses and point it out and make me feel so bad about it that I never recover.
The lesson that life is short has been reiterated to me this week. And the outcome of being quiet, stand-offish girl who never speaks to anybody is more or less the same as being that weird girl that nobody likes. I'm going to be lonely, and that's really not the life I signed up for. On the other hand, there's a chance that I could be that weird girl that SOME people like. I don't know what my odds are, but I have a feeling that to win my odds I'm going to have to be a little bit brave this year and let my own tiny freak flag fly.
