Daisy’s Haircut, #DowntonAbbey #SoCS

I didn’t see a last picture, not in some time. The last one of those I saw was one…I now do not remember what.

This week, Linda at
Stream of Consciousness Saturday, #SoCS
says to write about the last picture we see before writing.

I once loved to pour over photo albums of my mother or grandmother’s. My mom on her wedding day, the photos of my grandparent’s younger selves, or my own photo, smiling wide, in grade eight graduation gown.

Now I see so little that pictures don’t appear to me, not anywhere near clearly, unless they are shifting images I hold onto in my own wandering mind.

There’s a name for it, I believe but am too tired to look it up for this stream of consciousness writing moment, but I still see images in my own head. My mind hasn’t totally forgotten. My brain and those connections still fire off and hope to produce something tangible.

Well, sometimes it is a vague memory, myself as a tiny twelve-year-old, standing in my overalls in front of our side garage wall, full to the top with big cardboard boxes of fluid for home dialysis.

Other times, I see a picture, as if expertly framed, inside my thoughts. It’s an image that comes, without warning, like the one I started to see after binge watching all six seasons of Downtown Abbey in the last few weeks.

The young, naive kitchen helper, assistant cook Daisy. She finally sees what she has, after pining for all the wrong men, and she sees it after cutting all her hair off, to change up her image and to impress the boy.

At first, he laughs, but then they share a tender moment. She meekly looks up at him, her chopped off dark haired head. This one image seems to go along with that moment and its audio track, on a loop inside my mind.

I don’t know what that’s about. It isn’t real, didn’t happen that way (or at least I never saw it), but it feels so impossibly true to me.

My older brother is a photographer. I am proud of this, I admire him for many things, this included. He takes still images, mostly, and preserves a moment.

That’s all I try to do with my own writing, even if my own brain works against me, not giving me more than a moment’s peace, showing me a constant reel of images like I can still see them with my eyes.

It can be exhausting, sometimes preoccupying all of me, zapping my energy, as strange as that may sound.

Bad brain! Bad bad bad brain!

STOP IT!!!

Seeing Is Believing

Summer has arrived and the

Redefining Disability Awareness Challenge

continues on.

Last time I wrote about my own life with technology:

When It Rains It Pours

This week I get personal, I guess.

***

Q: Are there ways that disability affects your self perception?

A: How do I perceive myself?

Good question.

🙂

Disability definitely influences how I see myself. How could it not?

That’s the key word: “see”. How I see myself when I can not even see myself in a mirror.

I actually wrote a post about this topic last year:

Mirror Image,

where I wrote about how I see myself and the social norms of makeup, beauty, and fashion and my attempts to discover my own norms.

I held my grade eight graduation picture in my hands and stared at my face. I knew that a picture was simply a flat representation of what I was, that I was more than some one-dimensional image in a frame. I couldn’t quite believe that was what I looked like, photographed like though.

I could make out my broad smile and my relatively short haircut that framed my face.

I don’t know why, but I used to silently study the photo, often in my room. I don’t know what I was looking for exactly.

Perhaps I was simply vane.

Okay, maybe not, but I can’t quite describe what I was trying to accomplish by this act.

I remember snippets of what I look like. I have flashes, in my mind, to what I used to see when I would look in the mirror.

Mostly I did not see enough detail to pick myself apart, as so many women do. I saw my face and hair and shoulders in the reflective surface, in a bathroom somewhere, and I did not shy away at the Me looking back.

Women rip apart their physical selves so often and I am not immune to that, not entirely. I wish I were.

Merriam-Webster defines it as: “the idea you have about the kind of person you are”.

I know, logically and in my own heart, that I am a kind, generous, and friendly person. I know I am fun and can be funny from time to time.

Perceptions, however, they aren’t quite so logical I’m afraid. I wish they were because they are able to play tricks on me. These perceptions slip in and, before I know it, I am thinking things about myself that likely are just plain untruths.

Like my exaggerated perception that makeup would make me look like a clown, other strange and incorrect perceptions plague my thoughts.

Both self perception and self esteem are so intermingled. They involve the senses, mostly seeing for people. I go by my other senses to gage ideas about my own body and how I present my best self to the world.

I trace the shape of my nose, my eyebrows, and my skin to look for acne, of which I am happy to be rid of for the most part. The skin that was once covered in bumps as a teenager is mostly smooth now.

I am left with other worries that have replaced the pimples of my youth. I wish I had less of one feature and more of another.

I hate having frizzy hair or rough nails.

How does my face compare to all those of the women who are populating the rest of the world, makeup included?

I could focus on my imperfections all day and it’s not like the mirror is going to help with that or hurt it. The scale would talk to me if I wanted it to, but the only mirror that ever spoke to me was the toy Beauty and the Beast mirror I once had.

Sometimes I think the two cancel each other out somehow, that I should be okay then, but the nagging self-image exaggerations bleed into the good personality traits I know I possess.

The negative brings down any positives I’ve managed to accumulate.

I’m left with doubts that anyone could stand the sight of me, the part they can see and I can not.

I feel my beating heart inside my chest, under my hand, and I know that the good person I am inside is in tact.

If only I could convince myself that I am normal in my outward appearance.

If I could stop the shame that has built up over years then maybe I could be sure my first impressions, of which I am at a constant disadvantage to other people who see. When I meet someone I am strongly aware of the upper hand they have over me, as I try to show what a confident person I am and learn as much as I can about them, other than the exterior things most of us fall back on.

Sometimes I feel I am invisible and the next second I am terrified of how much I stand out.

I don’t know where this all might lead me going forward. My future is as uncertain as anyone’s, but will any of this get easier with age and general wisdom?

I can only hope so, but the perceptions will always exist. What’s a girl to do?

***

May I make a suggestion?

Follow:

The Redefining Disability Awareness Project on Facebook,

to help our little page grow.

🙂

Next week’s question:
Do you see disability as more of an asset or a drawback in your daily life?

Guess we’ll see how I’m feeling in a week.

🙂

Sometimes it depends on the day and my answer may change a dozen times between now and then.