See and be Seen
“To be seen. To have witnesses is the most you can ask. They don’t have to stay forever. They can stay a decade, or a year, or six months, or three months, or one night. And what they saw with you will not go away just because they have. It was real.” - Emma Forrest, Busy Being Free
Jesus CHRIST does this quote fuck me up. Mainly because I want it so badly to be true and yet I struggle to believe that it is. I struggle to believe that when someone disappears from your life, that all the things they saw in you remain. That any of it was real. It doesn’t help we tell ourselves that when someone sees something unflattering in us, it’s really about them. But when they see something beautiful in us… well.
Luckily my friends refuse to see my character defects and general icks, or at least if they do they’re decent enough to lie to me. I send them voice notes that are basically episodes of a podcast on the subject of whether I’m doing life right, and they respond thoughtfully and take care to point out the places where my perception of myself and/or the situation I’m agonizing over is a bit skewed. But they do it in such a loving way that I come out feeling adorable and gratified and deeply understood. I just hope they’re right.
In the beginning of relationships, we fall in love with ourselves through the eyes of this person who not only sees all these things in us that we’ve just been waiting for someone to notice, but they also like, really want to have sex with us. It’s the absolute best thing in the world, apart from being the kind of person that believes these things about themselves without needing to have it reflected back to them. I’m inching my way into this demographic every day, but I’m still haunted by how much it hurt in past relationships when that rose gold magic hour vision gets replaced with bad lighting and unflattering angles. And even when the beautiful things said in moments of pure presence is cast in sepia, to be left in the past forever under a stack of old National Geographics in your parents’ attic.
It’s just that I am at a point in my life in which I am figuring out who I am, again, and this time without the crutch of finding a partner to do it for me. In many ways I know exactly who I am, after years of devoting myself to learning all about it, but do other people know? I spent a significant amount of the past decade isolating myself for someone who just didn’t want to share me, but also didn’t really see me. And so now when somebody does, it’s like I’m a ghost and one day the weird kid that lives in my house looks me straight in the face and asks me if I want to play.
I realize I’m making a very big deal over compliments, but for someone who used to perform like a goddamn show dog for treats and has since transitioned into a regular person just doing her little old best to live a good, authentic, life, the intensity has been turned way up. The other day my friend Nikki, who has always seen me, told me that writing is so important because it’s the only way I let myself be truly vulnerable. Damn Nikki. Yes, this is where I give it a loud voice. And why it can be such a terrifying exercise, though ultimately liberating.
Everyone should have their version of this. Highly recommend. It’s why art exists. Even bad art. In fact, bad art is more vulnerable than not bad art. I used to send my scripts out to screenplay competitions without ever mentioning it to anyone, with absolutely no concern over what would come of it. Really my screenwriting is just a way for me to channel my excess energy and ancillary personalities into characters, so the idea of anyone reading those words was and is so cathartic. I feel connected to anyone that reads my words (including you, hi, I love you) in such a deep way because I know you know me, and you’re still here. You’re free to leave of course, but I won’t like it. (It’s something I’m working on.)
What I promise, in deep appreciation for those who do see me, is that I will always look back. And I will reflect and recall the beautiful, specific things I see in you, whether you stay a decade, or a year, or six months, or three months, or one night. They will not go away, even if I do. It is real.
I’m not a writer and am terrified at the thought of not articulating this correctly but I have to let you know that what you wrote impacted me in the way that the opening quote impacts you. I love when something I read moves me or even jars me. It made me have feelings similar to the ones I feel when I read my one of my favorite quotes. “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.” Kafka. (Not sure how accurate this rendition of his quote is, I mainly like the last line.)