The Mysterious Cry

I don’t think what I have to say is going to make you cry. But I won’t guarantee it because if you’re anything like me, you might occasionally burst into tears at the most random things. Doesn’t happen a lot to me, but sometimes I’m just at a loss for how to explain why I’m crying and I don’t know what to do about it. It’s not a depressed response; it’s not a “bad” crying. It’s not a painful feeling, and it’s not happy either. It’s also not something that happens very often. Usually I know why I’m crying when I do. I don’t know how to explain it, really.

I just finished watching a movie where I burst into tears for no apparent reason. I don’t even usually cry in movies. It was called Boychoir…and it’s about boys who sing in a choir. It wasn’t some “happy-go-lucky” movie, but it wasn’t all depressing either. The boy “wins” in life eventually.

I want so badly to understand why I cried, why I curled up in a ball in the corner of my couch and just let the tears flow. I wasn’t mourning, but it felt as if I had lost something. I wasn’t crying for joy, but I felt as if I had found something I had lost. It felt almost bittersweet, and like I was home, and like I knew who I was when I was watching this video.

But see, that confuses me. I don’t like that. And I don’t understand it. And I have to sit back now and analyze my feelings or else I’ll never be able to act upon them if need be because I won’t even recognize them or identify them properly. Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s the fact that I don’t feel that I know who I am and I don’t know my feelings because they’re dead, or I just have not allowed them to live. Maybe this movie brought me to my younger self when I knew what I was passionate about, and I knew what I liked, and I knew what I was good at.

I used to just know when I liked something and didn’t and wasn’t afraid to tell someone that what they liked sucked (I know, how kind of me). I think I lost most of that at some point in my teens. I remember becoming a teenager and becoming so much more withdrawn and afraid that my every move would be taken aggressively and would be revolting to someone. That’s something I definitely haven’t totally lost either.

I used to love playing piano. I used to love singing. Whenever I’m asked to answer what I do as a hobby, I usually respond with things that I’ve barely done as of late. The things that I used to love when I was younger: playing piano, singing, drawing, reading…those are my “go-to”s. But I hardly ever do them. I feel as if it’s connected to that very fact that I don’t even know what I like anymore. Because I don’t do those things. I could, I just don’t, and I’m not motivated to.

Do I even like those things anymore? Or do I just feel obligated to like them just because I know they are something that I’m good at? Or because I’m a loyal person, and they were so important to me, I have to be loyal to those things forever as if they were a life-long friend? As I’m writing this, I’m realizing, I don’t have to love those things anymore. Despite what I’ve been told by some, I don’t have to love playing music anymore. I don’t have to love drawing anymore. I don’t have to love reading anymore. Maybe the fact is that I’ve changed. And maybe I haven’t in a lot of ways too. The point is, if I have, is that so terrible? Despite what I’ve been told, am I obligated to play piano, sing, draw and paint, and write just because I’m good at them? Am I obligated to get a degree just because I’m supposedly smart? I’ve been spoken to a lot as if it’s sinful to “waste” my gifts. I’m going to be honest, it seems like I have too many to bring them all to my full potential. That’s just the reality.

Maybe I don’t know what I like because I don’t see the point in just “liking” things anymore. What’s the point of just liking things? Is the point that there is no point? Is that what fun is? What play is? I guess so. Is that what I’m wishing I hadn’t lost? I often have felt treated as if there has to be a point to everything I do and that everything that I love to do should either be used to make money, or worth money, or make a good impression on someone else, etc. I can’t even go to an art studio and enjoy the art. I either just look at art and either feel envious because others have their art displayed and I know my talents are not being recognized and that I am not using them, or I think, “Why would you draw a landscape? What is the point when you could take a photo? It takes skill, but what is the point of the skill anymore?"

That sort of reasoning was pounded into my brain to the point where I adopted it as my own. It’s to the point where I almost view liking things just for the sake of liking them as shallow. Is that what I was told? How I was treated? Maybe it’s that and also the fact that others’ opinions on what they like have hurt me far too deeply in certain ways—excluded me, and made me to feel so unwanted, useless, and unpleasant to behold.

And there I know I hit on something big. People may be kind to me. People might find me adequate. People might find me amusing at times. They might even go so far as to say that the world needs me, that I’m worth a lot and whatever other cliché things they can think of. But do they want me. Are they pleased with what they see, what they hear, what they touch, what they smell…and…nobody is allowed to taste me please…especially that creep on Tinder who said “I’m going to bite you” as if  he were a vampire. Just no…

It’s interesting that I want people to want me for no good reason, but I resent it at the same time. It feels artificial. Is there worth in the artificial sometimes? Is it really that I don’t give a crap what others’ think or care too much? Or is it that I don’t want them to even have an opinion, because I have been hurt too deeply by too many people who were critical of me and didn’t like me as I am?

It’s been a couple of weeks since I wrote the above. Since then, I had a conversation with my friend Taki about art. Taki is an art student. He really likes art. Like, a lot. Like, so much that it gets annoying and I become judgmental. But Taki is still a good guy and friend. A very talented good guy and friend. That being said, in Taki’s and my conversation about art, I told him how much I hated putting meaning into a work of art or music or whatever with the intention of moving people into having certain thoughts or feelings. Impassioning people I guess you might call it. I hate it because to me it feels like manipulation. Or I guess a better way to put it, indirect communication. Which to me feels like manipulation. I’m a much more straightforward kind of person.

It’s not that all of my art that I’ve created in the past has lacked meaning. There are a few pieces where I intentionally put meaning into my art. But all of those were just an expression of my feelings. I wasn’t trying to share some deep philosophical message. And the idea of creating art with a deep philosophical message seems confusing to me. I think that’s why I like writing that sort of thing down. Because you can paint a picture with words, so to speak, but it’s still straightforward. You still literally say what you mean.

How does this tie in to what I was rambling about two weeks ago? Well, a lot of what I was ranting about regarded this idea of subjectivity and whether or not it is worthy of attention and respect. Is it okay to like some things and reject others? Is that just the way of life? Taki had mentioned something about giving people what they want. I responded by saying, “I’m not necessarily into giving people what they crave. I’m into deciding what they crave.” Right after I sent that, it sounded to me like what I said could either be taken one of two ways: “Lady Gaga famous and cool kind of creepy” or “cultishly mind-controlling creepy”. And now as I’m saying this, I’m wondering, is there much of a difference between both of those kinds of creepy?...I did always say that I wanted to be the Lady Gaga of “Christian” music…

…But I digress…

 So when it comes to art, I don’t like giving people what they want. As I said, art is sometimes an expression of my feelings. Sometimes, I’m just drawing crap knows what. Sometimes it has no meaning. Either way, it is self-expression. And maybe that’s way I have a hard time sitting down to do it anymore. I started ranting to poor Taki about how I hated it when people looked at my art and tried to interpret meaning from it as if they knew me and could read my soul. Little do they know that I just threw a bunch of random lines together and colors together and it meant nothing other than that—lines and colors, plain and simple. I told him it was like English class all over again where we were required to put all sorts of meaning into things that probably weren’t meant to have any. Not that I have much to complain about when I could fudge my way into getting A’s, but I digress again.

I think truth is important to me in many ways because it’s also about being known. If I do intend meaning in a work of art and someone interprets it wrong, I feel as if that person doesn’t know me and deeply misunderstands me. If they interpret something into my work and there’s no meaning at all but they assume they know what the meaning is, they’re full of it. It’s one thing to say, “this is what it means to me” because then you’re acknowledging that you’re not coming to the discussion as a self-proclaimed all-knowing mind-reader. You’re acknowledging that your interpretation came about because of what you’ve experienced and chosen to pay attention to, and that that experience is different than others’. You’re acknowledging that one thing can have many meanings. That is truth. The failure to acknowledge subjectivity is not truth. Liking subjectivity, now that's a different story. Disliking subjectivity, now that's ironic. 

I think it irritates me in a similar way when someone dismisses me. Especially if they dismiss me because I apparently don’t play the social game well. After all, as a woman, there is that expectation that I am supposed to play the social game well, or that I at least want to and try to. I want people to know that saying the right social thing is never on my mind except sometimes at work. I just care about not hurting peoples’ feelings…but not at the expense of truth in a lot of instances…I’m not into giving people what they crave all the time…I wasn’t lying to Taki…

Okay, this is confusing, let’s try and put this together. I don’t want to sacrifice my self-expression by giving people what they want. Yet I don’t really express myself so much in art or music and hardly ever writing anymore anyway. I think when I combine those together, it makes sense to say that I don’t create art because that’s currently the only compromise that I can think of. If I can’t please everyone, then I better do nothing. I think maybe that’s partly why I have pretty much cut off my social contact as well and haven’t put any effort into making new friends. If I can’t make myself happy while also making others happy, why not just shut down? This all sounds so familiar. Trying to live in a world as an individual with other individuals, many of whom would rather sacrifice their own individuality and expect you to too.

Do I like art? I probably still do. But I don’t have to. I can like it if I want. In an anxiety group therapy class I finished recently, one of the leaders tended to correct me a lot when I said, “I should…” She’d say, “You can. It is possible. Not “should”. You may, you can go for a walk. You can choose to do so. You can choose not to. You can draw or you can choose not to. Who is to say you should. Why should? Who is to say you were wrong if you chose not to?” I still have a hard time with this way of thinking. Am I not obligated? Do I not have obligations to take care of myself? But should I like art? Should I appreciate subjectivity right now? Should I want to be social? Should I play the social game well? Or am I just in a place where I don’t. And is that okay? Maybe it’s just where I am right now, and maybe that’s okay. Maybe working alone and loving my organizational duties at my job at a local used bookstore is all I can manage right now. Or all that I will manage. Who says I should go back to school and use my brain? Who says I should be bored at my job right now? I’m not. It’s protecting something inside me right now, and right now, that’s okay. And who says I shouldn’t cry? I cried. I needed to and that’s it. That’s all.