30 Day Book Challenge: 22
Mar. 10th, 2012 10:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kasihyaDay 22 – Favourite book you own
I own all of my favorite books, but the one I’m happiest that I own is Abarat. It's more of a talisman at this point than a book, to me. Sometimes I just like to go through the pictures and look at them for a while, and I've read it so many times that right now I'm just letting it sit so that I can forget enough to make it worth reading again. I have a very good memory for things I've read ...
Unrelated: I am on a Peanuts kick right now. The theater department at my school put on Dog Sees God recently, and it was fantastic and possibly the best thing to happen to me this semester for multiple reasons (seriously, I have eight pages in my all-purpose-writing-notebook devoted to spazzing and trying to work through my feelings) and then I went back and started reading more Peanuts and realized that they are the sort of humor I really enjoy and need at this point in time.
I have been doing well the past week and a half or so! I can't place all of that on the play, but it definitely played a significant role. Also talking to my therapist, who told me that the intrusive thoughts I'd been having are normal, and something that everyone gets. Which is such a simple thing, but it really did help, because they were something which generated a lot of shame. We were also talking about failures in communication: a lot of the time, it takes a lot of effort to get her to understand what's going on in my head. And oftentimes, I don't understand what's going on with everyone else, and I berate myself for it even more than I berate her for misinterpreting what I say. We were talking about how it might be a matter of reference points. My reference points are so very different from those of most people around me in real life. Online? Heck yes, there are so many people to whom I can relate. Offline? Not so much. I haven't found them yet.
But things are looking up. I've realized what I want to be, and how I want to present myself, and I'm getting closer to reaching that point. The thing about this is that I came into college having no idea who I wanted to be, even less so than most people, and it's taken a lot of trial and error to figure out how to present myself in a way that shows people what I want to show them about me. I think I might be on a good track, now. I think that talking about it like this sounds artificial; people say you should "just be yourself", and "do what comes naturally". I say: screw that! Personal presentation is a form of art, just like anything else. There are many different facets of me, and people will react differently to Strix, the Flaming Homosexual than they will to Strix, the Bro and Strix, the Lumberjack. The self-image that I had at the beginning of freshman year is not who I am now; I like different things and see the world differently, and I have been shaped by subsequent experiences.
I don't want to stand out. I did when I first came to college: I wanted to be that flamboyant, colorful gay guy that everyone saw around campus. The past few months, I went through a phase where I just wanted to fade into the woodwork and become invisible; I didn't want to write any aspect of my personality into my clothing. Right now, I want to present myself as balanced; I want to be someone with clothing that is nice, vaguely metrosexual, but not eye-catching in any particular direction. I stand out enough. All I want to advertise is the fact that I am male, about the average amount of screwed-up, and straight-acting gay.
Fuck, this is coming out wrong. That's what I want to be. I want to look fucking normal. I want to look like white, upper-middle-class, Everyman. I want to not be effeminate or campy or flamboyant. It is not that I am ashamed of being gay. But I don't see myself as being flamboyant or girly, and yet everyone thinks that I am a girl, and it fucking sucks. I don't want to be machisimo or anything too far over on that end of the scale, because that wouldn't be me. I am willing to make some concessions with regards to what I wear and how I decorate, just because even though I enjoy things like my stuffed animals and scarves, the connotations that they carry make me uncomfortable enough that they outweigh the enjoyment I get from them.
There, I said it like I meant to say it. As a writer, that is the best feeling in the world. There is nothing as satisfying as conveying a sentiment in exactly the way that it feels in your head.
Except for s'mores pop tarts with milk after an emotionally exhausting event. I'm with Thor on this one.
I own all of my favorite books, but the one I’m happiest that I own is Abarat. It's more of a talisman at this point than a book, to me. Sometimes I just like to go through the pictures and look at them for a while, and I've read it so many times that right now I'm just letting it sit so that I can forget enough to make it worth reading again. I have a very good memory for things I've read ...
Unrelated: I am on a Peanuts kick right now. The theater department at my school put on Dog Sees God recently, and it was fantastic and possibly the best thing to happen to me this semester for multiple reasons (seriously, I have eight pages in my all-purpose-writing-notebook devoted to spazzing and trying to work through my feelings) and then I went back and started reading more Peanuts and realized that they are the sort of humor I really enjoy and need at this point in time.
I have been doing well the past week and a half or so! I can't place all of that on the play, but it definitely played a significant role. Also talking to my therapist, who told me that the intrusive thoughts I'd been having are normal, and something that everyone gets. Which is such a simple thing, but it really did help, because they were something which generated a lot of shame. We were also talking about failures in communication: a lot of the time, it takes a lot of effort to get her to understand what's going on in my head. And oftentimes, I don't understand what's going on with everyone else, and I berate myself for it even more than I berate her for misinterpreting what I say. We were talking about how it might be a matter of reference points. My reference points are so very different from those of most people around me in real life. Online? Heck yes, there are so many people to whom I can relate. Offline? Not so much. I haven't found them yet.
But things are looking up. I've realized what I want to be, and how I want to present myself, and I'm getting closer to reaching that point. The thing about this is that I came into college having no idea who I wanted to be, even less so than most people, and it's taken a lot of trial and error to figure out how to present myself in a way that shows people what I want to show them about me. I think I might be on a good track, now. I think that talking about it like this sounds artificial; people say you should "just be yourself", and "do what comes naturally". I say: screw that! Personal presentation is a form of art, just like anything else. There are many different facets of me, and people will react differently to Strix, the Flaming Homosexual than they will to Strix, the Bro and Strix, the Lumberjack. The self-image that I had at the beginning of freshman year is not who I am now; I like different things and see the world differently, and I have been shaped by subsequent experiences.
I don't want to stand out. I did when I first came to college: I wanted to be that flamboyant, colorful gay guy that everyone saw around campus. The past few months, I went through a phase where I just wanted to fade into the woodwork and become invisible; I didn't want to write any aspect of my personality into my clothing. Right now, I want to present myself as balanced; I want to be someone with clothing that is nice, vaguely metrosexual, but not eye-catching in any particular direction. I stand out enough. All I want to advertise is the fact that I am male, about the average amount of screwed-up, and straight-acting gay.
Fuck, this is coming out wrong. That's what I want to be. I want to look fucking normal. I want to look like white, upper-middle-class, Everyman. I want to not be effeminate or campy or flamboyant. It is not that I am ashamed of being gay. But I don't see myself as being flamboyant or girly, and yet everyone thinks that I am a girl, and it fucking sucks. I don't want to be machisimo or anything too far over on that end of the scale, because that wouldn't be me. I am willing to make some concessions with regards to what I wear and how I decorate, just because even though I enjoy things like my stuffed animals and scarves, the connotations that they carry make me uncomfortable enough that they outweigh the enjoyment I get from them.
There, I said it like I meant to say it. As a writer, that is the best feeling in the world. There is nothing as satisfying as conveying a sentiment in exactly the way that it feels in your head.
Except for s'mores pop tarts with milk after an emotionally exhausting event. I'm with Thor on this one.
