CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS MOTIVES

Bad habits are not grown over night, but accumulated like old knick knacks sitting in your curio cabinet, dust filled, waiting to be addressed. As seen on the staged picture to the left, I am very programmed as a millennial, to put my best version of myself out there…Looking as pretty as I can, adding filter, different lights, all the things to make people see me the way that I want to be seen. Although a millennial, and yes I am one believe it or not, I come from the era where social media was just beginning to make it’s platform in our everyday lives. An era where we were able to represent ourselves the way that we wanted to be seen. The photo on the left is a pretty good representation of what I like people to see of myself when they first meet me. I say meet me and when I do, my first initial thought is to think face to face. Some of you might even still have that old school train of thought, but in reality the way we meet each other has become detached and impersonal. If we all really want to be honest we meet through the internet unless we are put in the same settings by class, work, or any other extra curricular activities we may involve ourselves in. The picture to me says confidence. It says I am sassy, I love to hang out, and my smile comes with no teeth. That sounds funny, but my teeth have always been an insecurity of mine. The age lines on my forehead removed. Really thinking about it, I might be giving a false perspective of myself to whomever comes to my page to meet me, but honestly that was intentional. That was the game plan. See me how I want to be seen not how YOU want to see me. Control is huge part of that. In this era we are in complete control of what we want people to see. It really is a scary thing at times. We put these pictures of our perfect lives, our perfect kids, spouses, pets. You name it we put it out there, all of it controlled by our warped sense of what our reality really is.

Picture A as I call it, to the left, is a picture of what I want you to see. Also, to get a little further into the the psychology of it, probably more of what I want to see in myself. When I sat down to type this paper out, I really didn’t know what was going to come out of me. The topic is really a sensitive topic to most people myself included. Becoming vulnerable to people I don’t even know and who do not know me is not some special trait that I was born with, it’s equally as terrifying to me as the next person. To describe picture A I would say I took that at my kitchen table, angle up, facing the light out of my sliding glass door, to my “good side”, without teeth smiling, insert filter. I think it was a normal day nothing significant was happening, probably feeling a little low needed a change in my life. So, as most of girls do, I dyed my hair, because when all other control was lost in my life, my hair was the one thing I know, no one could control but me. Posted a pic of my new hair probably captioned “new hair, new me” and waited for the likes to follow suit. Some part of me in that picture was needing a certain validation geared toward physical appearance, but when you loose your sense of self and your sense of what you think you life is supposed to be these things happen. Insecurity was the driving force of that picture A to the left. Controlled validation. Sweet success.

The picture to the top right of this page was one of 100 takes for myself to capture the essence of what I felt to be a self portrait and what made sense of that in my head. What I think anyways. I feel that a lot of my life I have been pulled in many directions, by different people fueled with different opinions of who or what I should be in this world. I haven’t made much sense of it all. I pick and choose pieces from each person that I find the slightest bit relevant, and apply them to my every day life in some sort of positive manor. I have always been a People-Pleaser and it has always been important to me how others view me. I’ve vented my frustrations with just about every one of these individuals in a manor each one could understand. As we separated, which families do during death, it became most apparent to me that I was really on my own. They say death comes in threes well I guess we cheated that for now. Knowing that I had a gift of reading people, I only shared what I thought each different person could take. I only shared what wouldn't make me sound crazy. Even though I was. Nothing becomes more apparent between relationships as death does.

It feels like a rope pulling in each direction steering me towards what the “right thing” may be to do. Growing up is like walking through a minefield of fake IDs ,awkward firsts ,break ups ,make ups , and insecurities. You hurry and hurry and hurry to grow up be your own you, live your own life, no rules from others just doing what you want to do “living your best life”. Funny truth about it is once you enter the realm of adulthood no one has a clue on what to do. I mean you were given the basic tools. Clean your room, behave, don’t stay up late, study etc etc, but do you apply all these rules once you are free to do what you like….nope. It can be a slap in the face with reality when the bills start coming in and you look out the window and it’s snowing. Guess what? You don’t get to crawl back under your sheet and say forget it…I have a sick day anyway. The bills won’t pay themselves. So you conform to the norm of whatever you are surrounded with. You call your cousins and siblings, maybe even distant relatives and you pull pieces from their normal that agree with what your normal may be.

The representation I was trying to establish could be taken so many ways. I pull from each of the surrounding people, but yet again I feel I am being pulled in so many directions. Society has a funny way of doing that to you because for most of us, or at least myself, it's really all you know. Each strand of hair represents a pull and push of each of the people I love and look up to or maybe even talk to to make myself and my life choices feel better, They all play a significant role in the shaping of who I am today at 34. I have read Susan Sontag and have tried to psychoanalyze the meaning of her photography in Plato"s Cave and the one thing I could come up with the one thing that ate at me until I found it, was that the picture is capturing what you want to see. You can look at the picture knowing the story behind it and not really agree with what she captured or how she perceived it. A photograph says what the person viewing it wants to see, and in those small moments, brief moments of observation you gather your opinion. Your perception can be different depending on who you are and how you perceive pieces like this. I could put this picture up and people could think a million things. The story behind it pulls you in and from that you gather your information. To end my essay I would like to say that typing this free style was the easiest way for me. When I overthink the process I think I overshadow my imagination. Writing your feelings is an open place for people to see is not exactly comforting. Be who you are, write what you know, with an understanding that everyone may see it in a different light.