A letter to myself, on the self

A Birthday letter to myself. Or to whom it may concern:

Once when I left a job my manager handed me a card on my last day - the usual thing, where a few people write pleasantries, best of luck, etc. - with a William Morris wallpaper pattern (I think it was Strawberry Thief) across the front. 

“Did you know he is my all time hero? Did we talk about this?” I asked him with a smile, thinking it was surprisingly specifically chosen for me.

“Who?” he looked a little startled

“William Morris,” (this didn’t really seem to clarify things) “the guy who designed this pattern.” I waved the card in his direction, as if that would illuminate him.

“Oh, no, I just thought it looked very you.” He laughed and shrugged, and so did I. We left it there and went to slice a Colin Caterpillar.

Well, regardless of why he said that, he wasn’t wrong, I suppose. I’m writing this from underneath my Morris & Co duvet cover, to be completely transparent. Looking at a bookcase lined with Morris & Co paper. So, touché. And I found that gratifying at the time, and probably still would; it’s an association that is a high compliment for me. But also when I look back on it I can’t quite figure out how it happened: how the personality that I displayed at work somehow translated into an aesthetic (one connected to a social, political, environmental, and artistic ethos) which could be identified even without any background knowledge. Was it how I dressed? Maybe I wore Liberty prints more often than the average person, but I wouldn’t say my work attire was particularly Arts & Crafts, and probably typically veered towards what would be most comfortable to walk home in without being actual workout gear. In all honesty, I hadn’t been happy enough in that job most of the time to really think about my clothing choices. Was it something I talked about, then? Did I use some similar pattern as my desktop background? 

At this point I couldn’t tell you, and nor could my manager, I imagine. But probably most people who have some level of interaction with me would come to the same conclusion, and possibly pick the same card. And now years later this tiny incident, this greeting card I probably recycled, popped into my head. To some extent, I think I’ve adopted that indefinable something that leads “me” to be summed up with a particular aesthetic, and slipped into it as something to build a persona around. Even when people don’t know the significance of it, or generally conflate it with anything a bit ‘cottagecore,’ ‘Victorian’, or just a bit twee, it seems to work as a way to categorize myself aesthetically and therefore, apparently, socially. My visual and intellectual tastes turn that way, so it evolved somewhat naturally. But I’ve just become more consciously aware of this categorization these days: In the midst of a fairly strange year, emotionally speaking, I’ve found myself repeatedly looking around my room, through my closet, down my own entire Instagram grid, and through my memories (for better or worse), struck by the things that are reflected back at me, and wondering how people interpret it, what they think it says about me, and the life I do and want to lead. And at the same time I have to ask myself…what is the life I want to lead, and do all of these things align? Or do they need to neatly align?

All these things that are indicative of me that I can see in my own bedroom as I write this - the cookbooks, the piles of fabric, the postcards, prints on the wall, ceramics picked up on holidays, hand creams, a bottle of perfume that was gifted to me, a framed restaurant menu, unfinished knitting on the desk, pots of pens, baseball caps dangling on the back of a door with ironic wine slogans on them, medals from finishing races, various novels and nonfiction titles, running shoes, heels from going out somewhere nice, a green silk dress hanging on the door, some rings I was too lazy to put away properly, literally an oil portrait of myself - these are representative of all the things I know about myself, from the inside out. But they’re also disparate, and always shifting. Most of them I love, including my Morris & Co linens and everything tied up in the visual culture they draw on. But in fact, at times, all these bits of myself mixed together in a room are downright confusing. At one point recently, I felt actually completely oppressed by them as I looked around my space, so much so it resulted in the physical sensation of being tied down. Suddenly all these things, objects related to all the sides of myself, were almost shouting at me, shouting over each other, as if I needed to wipe the slate clean and only pick one, or go completely deaf from the cacophony. I almost threw away all my books. Don’t worry, I talked myself out of that one. I did go through my closet and get rid of quite a lot, and then go on Vinted and order a secondhand Patagonia skort. (We all cope with stress in our own ways. I love the skort, for the record.)

There’s a reason I love this painting: When have women not struggled with feeling caged in? (Mariana by Millais - and it might be worth noting that in the related Tennyson poem Mariana seems to be waiting for someone else to break her free)

It was an interesting thought, though, being oppressed by one’s own personality. Why the oppression? Why the whirl of anxiety of seeing these things side-by-side? After all, if there is really oppression, it means there’s something (someone) else underneath, waiting, struggling to come out. It took me a while to start to understand, and perhaps I’m still unraveling it. But the thing is, there are many things in that list that I’m not sure what to do with, at least not outside of that one room where I spend time alone. Hardly anyone else ever sees them, and that might be unconsciously intentional. But part of the problem is, it’s a mess. It’s full of contradictions. There is no one thing I am, and I struggle to make myself into a noun in the way that someone else might say “I am a runner,” “I am a craftsperson,” “I’m a writer,” or (now cringe-inducing) “I’m a foodie.” I realized, effectively, I had no clear way of defining myself, to myself, and whatever I projected outward also didn’t quite feel like it was really me. If that’s not an existential crisis, tell me what is. 

How do I exist in the world? What do I show people? Well, what we all can see, and know others see, and control, is the way we represent ourselves using technology and social media: instagram, twitter, dating apps, blogs, LinkedIn, etc. These ‘tools’ make it easy for us to choose a specific version of ourselves, and generally to prioritize that version over the others. We’re subtly encouraged to typecast ourselves, because it’s more visually consistent, I suppose, and consistency is possibly as aesthetically appealing as symmetry. Not to mention, there is something satisfying in art-directing your own life, even if it’s blurring the lines of fantasy and real, chaotic life. It lets us wrap each other neatly up in a packet; people know why they choose to engage with you, and what to keep coming back for. ‘This person gives me outfit inspiration,’ ‘this person is outdoorsy,’ ‘this person knows a lot about cooking,’ or whatever it is. But we do this in our real lives as well, don’t we? As Cher says insightfully in Clueless, “he does dress better than I do. What would I bring to the relationship?” We all want our thing that we bring to our relationships and to the world at large, that we stand out for, that people see us for, and that mark us as part of a group (or, sometimes, as outside and above a group). 

At some point, after it being reflected back to me enough times, I think I started to portray myself in a way that felt cohesive and in line with the person who might have everything in a Morris & Co print, who might really be the person I had curated the facade of. Was that person me entirely? It’s almost impossible to know what others see, but it has started to occur to me that the way some people have described what they think my tastes and interests are don’t feel like they fit me entirely - like that person is trying to force me into a costume I don’t want to wear. But I don’t contradict them, either. (A memory appears here: someone once gave me a puzzle they didn’t want, with an extremely kitsch image of a country cottage, surrounded by a riot of flowers and cats - apparently this was how they saw my taste and my interests. I don’t mean to be rude, but I was secretly offended by this; it was definitively a misread of what I find beautiful and interesting and worth having around. But it felt too rude to decline, or help them understand what I really liked, despite being a close friend.) I suppose being associated with things that feel Victorian is quaint, a bit entertaining for people, and actually there is something important underlying why I love those prints, regardless of what else people throw into the jumble. Many people, I imagine, don’t know the radical political, social, and environmental significance of Morris & Co prints and Arts & Crafts as a movement, and actually it’s safe enough for them not to. (Let me be clear - News From Nowhere predicts a violent overthrow of the government and prevailing social order. Not quite so “John Lewis” perhaps.) I knew how most people would read my ‘brand’ (A bit dainty? Old fashioned? Non-threatening? Vaguely poetic?), and I was ok with it because it felt stable, interesting enough, and easy to live with.

Is this how people see “me”? Please help.

Somehow, somewhere, I became trapped by living up to what this aesthetic means to other people and how the expect me to act based on a surface observation (however correct or incorrect their interpretation was). I had created this sense of self, and tried to hold on to it, because I knew how it was received and the ways it was positively reinforced as cute or artsy or ‘classic’. (I speak as if I am an influencer and the sad truth is probably very few people look at my internet persona, so the scale of this internalized pressure is even more dismaying to me now.) But then, what of the other things that make up my self, that don’t show up wrapped in velvet? Where were they, and who saw them besides me? In fact, when these things came up in real life, I often downplayed them, or avoided saying much as if I would step on someone else’s toes, someone more legitimate, or perhaps just whoever was around me, who might suddenly be disappointed that I wasn’t who they expected. I remember for example going for a trail run once, leaving the house, and the person I was with laughed and said “wow you look like such a runner” as if I was dressed up for a part I didn’t earn. To go run 10 miles of trail. Am I not a runner? But I laughed, did this awkward twisting thing I know I do with my body when I don’t know how to react, and made a self-deprecating face and comment. All as if to agree that no, in fact, I had no idea what I was doing, because the girl who likes lace trim certainly wouldn’t be wearing those shorts.

But what does it mean if I take these other things on, intentionally, as a part of my identity? If I take them seriously, think about the sides of myself that wants and does those things? Does my self suddenly fall apart? Does it make a mess? Does anyone else have the patience to also make sense of those things existing in one vessel? Would it have been a problem to reveal how much that run mattered to me, how much strength I actually have, and how much it was a part of my daily life? 

I was watching a film recently in which one character is asked her opinion of another character. “He is the most complete person I know,” was the reply, which was taken as high praise, and my immediate emotional reaction was I think a kind of envy. Would someone describe me that way? What does it mean to be a complete person? Well, maybe it’s not clear because really I don’t think the script was all that well written, but in a way there is something to it. There is obviously the concept of “self integration” in the psychological sense, and maybe that’s a part of it. But also there is something in it of multi-dimensionality: that a person has found, acknowledged, and brought to the surface everything that they have to offer the world. 

The self as cubist? But that’s not really how it works, none of us is static. We also need room to shift depending on context, while still keeping equal hold on everything we hold within us. The challenge is figuring out how, and feeling able to actually be a complete person in front of others.

A scene from the second season of White Lotus that got lodged in my mind is when Daphne (my favorite character, for the record) says, subtly justifying deception: “We never really know what goes on in people’s minds, or what they do, right? I mean, you spend every second with somebody and there’s still this part that’s a mystery…You don’t have to know everything to love someone…” It was simultaneously so cynical and so wise as an understanding of how we relate to each other, and what we reveal. And truthfully, she’s right. We can fall in love with someone based on certain elements, and if others are revealed that we don’t like we can stay in love with them. You can love someone and not know everything, and perhaps we imagine that makes it easier to love them too. But what of the parts you (or they) don’t know? Where are they hidden, and who loves them? (What if you’re not even doing that for yourself?) They need to go somewhere - and for Daphne they do, which is perhaps the point of much of her character. 

What if those parts of ourselves don’t have anywhere to go, and we wish they would just go away? One of the things that I found most jarring in the film Tár wasn’t the obsession or the threats or the violence, but actually the moment when she goes home, to her parents’ house, up into the attic, to watch old recordings. Suddenly she has gone back in time, to a self (in fact, even a name?) she left behind, buried somewhere underneath her slick persona. When she sits down in that attic and pops in a VHS tape, slipping back into her past, it’s clear that she has completely lost the self she spent so much energy developing and reinforcing. In fact, it’s significant that the film starts with her having a new suit made: a costume to play the part of Lydia Tár. Or the way she slips away to her old apartment, a self that is kept apart from everyone else, and where surreal fears start to permeate the environment. Eventually of course the ‘truth’ of who she is becomes blurry, the separation seen as dishonesty, nobody can quite say who she is really, how truthful and ethical she has been, and if she ‘deserves’ to be up on a pedestal. It proves impossible to keep up the divide between the versions of herself; the inner world she experiences alone, or who she was before, and the persona she has built up so elegantly. Trying to maintain that split leads to her reality collapsing in on itself, a very visceral rock bottom. The performance disappears entirely, quite literally, and when (if) she tries to re-enter it, it can only cause shame. But the ending is also beautiful, in its own way. Because back in that attic room some sense of the truth comes out: that she loves what she does, even if the perfectly curated exterior couldn’t, in the end, save her from her own ego.

The sociologist Erving Goffman coined the terms “frontstage” and “backstage” behavior in explaining everyday social interactions, and how a sense of self is managed in relation to other people. In this theory there are different contexts, or stages on which we perform different selves, while privately there may be behaviors, ideas, preferences, etc that might not be deemed acceptable for others to see. Simply put - we maintain some level of social coherence and harmony by playing these front stage roles, but we also manage how others perceive us, and in turn our own sense of self. It provides a sense of safety, that we know we can be acceptable and engage with other people, but it also requires determining what is acceptable when, and to whom, and to ourselves. And sometimes, letting something that might have been ‘behind the scenes’ out can be perceived as weird, unacceptable, or even completely ‘insane.’ These norms, and the way that people react to us, guide how we learn to express ourselves, what sides are allowed out, and what we think might actually be completely unbearable or mad. 

There’s the potential to lose oneself completely in this, to try and try to show only certain sides of ourselves, in the right place at the right time, to the point that we freeze, having lost our ability to find the stage door. Perhaps part of what was happening with all my belongings shouting at me around the room was that the back stage had become too cluttered, while my mind was trapped by a rigid sense of what was allowed out front. At some point, nearly everything I love to do had in some sense been pushed to the back stage, in favor of certain aspects of myself that I knew were acknowledged by others to be “very me.” The solution in the moment was to either do a clear-out, decide which parts I wanted to keep (which would be a form of self-destruction, even if only metaphorical), or start to more seriously let these things out onto the social stage; let people see them, and hear them fully and clearly expressed.

In the book Checkout 19 there is a passage that I had to transcribe (although for brevity I’ve left out some of the beautiful prose here): 

“We quite enjoy it, don’t we, when a woman feels and behaves in ways that don’t have any obvious accord with her outward aspect. We do Why not, Yes, why not. Keep them guessing. That’s right, keep them guessing. Isn’t that why the surrealists loved Alice so much - because despite her golden-girl looks and hairband…she was wilful and intrepid and went where she didn’t ought to go. And kept going. And kept going. The surrealist delighted in contradictions. Yes. It’s a form of rupture in reality…There is this constant desire to break out of one’s own skin and into another reality. Sometimes you see paintings of rocks or ocean, or wilderness, and you think not only will I go there but I will partake of a whole new kind of experience.”

It’s unclear to me who the “we” is here, and in fact I think it might just be a single self. My self, as well. Yes, in fact, we do like it, but it can also be terrifying. What happens when you rip through that screen of reality and open yourself up to a new one, and to who you are there? Do the people you care about come with you, can you go back to them? Can you move back and forth now that the tear has been made? We are all full of these contradictions - or at least I know I am, and at times it’s hard to hold on to the fact that two opposites might in fact both be me. But why not leap back and forth, and why not try to take someone with you? Why not fully experience every version of yourself that exists? And yet somehow many of us seem deeply afraid of doing that. Or, again, I know I was for a very long time. 

Borrowed from Checkout 19

This keeps jumping out at me recently, and maybe it’s a collective theme, slowly emerging after we all got stuck with ourselves for months on end. The film Beau is Afraid is, to me, effectively a film about someone who is terrified of living his life, of being an individual person in the world who impacts and reacts to other people, who makes decisions, acts upon and creates life. (Full disclosure, I wept through the whole thing the first time I watched it.) Terrified of disappointing his mother. Terrified of vulnerability. Terrified of the creative and totally chaotic act of having children, who may or may not reflect elements of himself back to him in unexpected ways. Of the potential loss that’s implied in all these things. Terrified of a final judgment on his character and the way he lived his life - whose judgment? Everyone’s, but it’s the fear of everyone’s judgment that makes him judge himself (as many of us surely do) so harshly and tragically. If this is us, what are our options? To minimize ourselves somehow, to hold some or all of ourselves back in order to avoid the judgment and rejection we’ve learned must await us if we let those things out. Or, like Tár, we dig our heels in, lean into pride and try to big up our chosen identity even more to more effectively hide what we might not want people to see. Surely there’s another way there, but it means seeing, knowing, and embracing every element of ourselves, including the anger and the weakness and the parts that just don’t want to be our parents’ brochure models.

Another anecdote: I was having brunch with someone recently, and we were talking about ayahuasca. “Are you ready to meet yourself?” they asked me. It was a way of talking about it I hadn’t actually heard before, but also possibly the perfect question we should all ask ourselves, psychedelics aside. How many of us are ready to meet ourselves, really? But I think more importantly, right now, is the question of which parts of ourselves are we not letting everyone else meet, and why are we afraid of it being seen? 

There are things that seem to come with some awful risk of not being cool enough, or good enough, or interesting enough, or somehow causing offense, or being too much for someone to handle, being actually a bit ‘crazy’ (and let’s face it, women who do things that don’t match their exterior are often given that label) - but what, who, really are they? Usually they are the most creative, passionate, interesting things we have to express, and it’s at the intersections of our various qualities that we find our real uniqueness. But that is what makes it so risky - what if someone doesn’t understand them? What if one of those parts of the Venn diagram of the self is so unacceptable that nobody will look at the rest? What if nobody likes that photo you post, or someone stops following you because ‘that’s not the kind of content they’re here for,’ or whatever it is we do online when we’re consuming someone else’s performance? What if someone disappears from our life because some side of us just doesn’t fit with what they want from us? On some level, it is horrific to reveal these things, and have them judged as inadequate, or disappointing, or disgusting, or shameful. Maybe the solution is to hide away in a wretched apartment alone to avoid actually being shown the rejection again and again. Or maybe like Tár, you fear you’ll lose your place in the world, your status, your entire identity and reason for existing the minute you let it out.

But again, like Tár, the effort of following the rules set out by a clearly-defined and demarcated sense of self often comes at too much of a cost. Pushing down the less refined parts, the ones that contradict or clash with a chosen stage self, rarely work out. For myself, after decades of ignoring this fact, it’s occurred to me how the same mechanism that helped me present a predictable, cohesive version of myself to the majority of people actually turned against me in various self-destructive ways. Anything that didn’t fit needed to be smothered, restrained, locked away. I pretended to hardly engage in things that brought me joy, or never showed them to anyone. Or I would simply stop doing them. I would literally fall silent, or shut down as I fought with myself over what could come out. Like Tár, it can make any of us become an accomplice in our own downfall or at least dissatisfaction, as we turn one idea of ourself we think is superior against all others.

Does this sound obvious? Perhaps. I Am What I Am was released in 1983, maybe we should have all gotten our heads around this already. There are plenty of memes saying “speak your truth,” etc. Sure, easy enough. And yet…I’m not sure it is, especially given the dramatic expansion of our social world, projecting versions of ourselves out in completely uncontrollable ways online, amongst many different people whose own experiences and expectations and feelings we need to navigate. Not to mention that many people still meet with literal violence for simply trying to be themselves in the world. But under less literal physical threat from others, I’ve been scrolling back through my own Instagram, looking at old photos of myself, even just from a few months ago, and having the strange sensation of finally seeing myself, of what was really being captured there, and maybe more importantly what wasn’t. What has been held back, or that I’ve poked holes in to signal that I don’t think too much of myself. In the photos I can now see what must be invisible to other people: a thick wax casing, like I’m a human Babybel cheese, restricting my movements, making sure the wrong thing doesn’t get out, my face doesn’t move the wrong way, I don’t act until I know what the reaction will be (and I suppose, hope that means I don’t get bruised or damaged). I don’t smile completely, I don’t shout, I don’t fully stretch out my limbs, I don’t dance, I don’t get angry in front of anyone. 

Or I find myself replaying scenarios in my head recently, some literal reenactments, some strange dreamlike mixes that speak to things I wish I could re-do. In one of them I’m standing inside a house I’m familiar with, and there are tall, wide glass sliding doors looking out over a small river. The sun is out, yellow glints refracting off eddies, and leaves - maybe of ash trees? - nodding out over the banks and leaving dappled shade here and there. I sit quietly on the sofa and admire it. I say to my companion, “it’s so pretty out,” mildly, and stay seated there, languidly. Truly it’s beautiful, entrancing, you might say it looks like a stock image of happiness. I see this scene in my mind and I want to leap into my own body now, say “let’s jump in!” run straight through the windows, smash them apart, fall down into the shallow river so that I’m soaked-through in one go, laugh, lie in the sun, stretch out my arms and legs as far as they will go and feel the funny combination of cold from the water and warmth from the sun all at once all over my body and through my skin to where my inside self meets the rest of the world.

Maybe I can’t go back to that exact room, to that exact river, and leap in right there, with the same person witnessing it. Maybe nobody needs to witness it, although somehow I think it’s important they do. But after what at times has felt like a physically as well as mentally exhausting process, that’s all I want to do, and I want to shout as loud as possible how much I love it. And then maybe if I want I’ll put on a nice dress and see an opera. Or go for a run. Or watch Clueless again. Or drink a beer, or bake a cake, or make a snarky comment about some ad I saw online, or spill food all over myself which I will inevitably do, or be tired and stay in bed, or do a tarot reading, or start trying to interpret my dreams out loud, or admit I thought the restaurant last night was actually a bit lame, or say I don’t much like someone, or that I really do like them and tell them all their wonderful qualities. Or dance very badly to ABBA, or put on bright purple eyeshadow. Or put up William Morris wallpaper, of course. Or go for a hike and cry a tear of joy at the view. Or whatever else I feel like doing. And hopefully let everyone else enjoy the part of me that enjoys that too. As Cher Horowitz eventually learns in the film, it’s not your clothes that matter (although being fabulously dressed in tartan never hurts) or who your dad is (ugh, looking at you, Elton); it’s how you learn to recognize, and appreciate the many different qualities of people, and the ones you have yourself, that will make you happiest.

Happy Solstice. Go outside and sprawl yourself in the sunshine (with SPF, please).