Let me set the scene: I’m struggling to fit a large bottle of my favorite cheap Moscato into my bag without dropping my lit American Spirit or tangling the wires of the earbuds connected to my flip phone.
As I walk out of the liquor store listening to Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties, the same semi-obscure band whose merch I am currently wearing, I have three thoughts in quick succession.
If anyone were paying attention to me, they’d think I’m playing a shitty character.
Well, I kind of am.
Wait, no. This is somehow me, fully and authentically.
I’ve spent a lot of time recently feeling like a caricature of myself. It’s like you asked someone to describe an archetypal angsty young adult. I’m a green haired, bisexual vegetarian who spends her free time dabbling in socialism and alcoholism. Tatted, pierced, on a variety of psych meds, too into emo music and smoking. You get the picture. If I were on a television show, I’d be called poorly written for being so on the nose.
Even my sob story is almost comical. The bad writer that is the universe apparently decided it wouldn’t be clear enough that I’m troubled if I only had one dead parent, so it gave me two. It never gets less awkward when I forget my audience and make an orphan joke around someone who didn’t know. Although their faces do get funnier.
I’m diagnosed with bipolar disorder and OCD, which means I find myself drunkenly trying to explain the difference between antidepressants, antipsychotics and mood stabilizers to nosy hookups as they get dressed and I take my nighttime pills. When this happens several times a month, it starts to feel like an exposition montage to establish that I’m crazy and/or have bad taste in men. Either works.
I’m a woman in my early 20s, so I have complicated histories with food and sex. That’s hardly noteworthy. It does, however, all contribute to a backstory that I would venture to call tragic. The plot is heavy handed and slightly lazy, but it’s mine, goddamnit.
These little caricature moments evoke feelings of both unbearable introspection and humorous comfort since I started noticing them. There’s this underlying fear of being outed as disingenuous, as if someone might find out at any moment that I’m putting on a performance. There’s something inherently uncomfortable about being exactly who someone thinks you will be. It is absolutely more uncomfortable to downplay my real traits so no one thinks I’m faking them. Subverting expectations was never going to work for me because, for better or worse, this is who I am. And why shouldn’t I lean into that? Everything about me feels exaggerated and on the nose because it is, and why should that make it any less authentic?
Some of us just look like we have a passion for cigarettes and shitty alcohol with the tragic backstory to match because we do.
