Cryyyyyin'

This is how I wish I looked when I'm crying. Beautiful, tragic, damsel-in-distress, dark but still lovely. (I got this image from a Google search and it credited www.goodreads.com, but I couldn't find the original.)

Instead, both because I'm bald and because I'm older and stressed out all the time, this is what I look like when I cry:

Not the look I'm going for when I'm trying to get pity from someone. I guess the wrinkles and the lack of hair to hide them are what bother me here. And this is not the worst of it. This is my impression of myself crying.

Just another way that dressed up images I see influence my own reality and make me wish that I were someone else. What a tragedy that I deny my own lived experience based on my skewed version of what a beautiful person looks like.

Well, this is what I look like when I cry. I have to live with it. I'm sure no one is repulsed. When I cry, my heart is spilling out. I hope that becomes more important to me than wondering how I look to the person I'm crying to.

The 10-Day Redefining Challenge--Day 7

I think I take myself too seriously. Seriously.

I try to be very put together and composed in social settings. I am self-conscious about my smile and laugh, so I minimize all expression when I'm with anyone other than my mom and sister. I also check and double check to make sure my appearance is impeccable; because heaven forbid I let anyone see me with a bit of food in my teeth or a drip at the end of my nose (the wonderful by-product of a sinus procedure I had done a few years ago).

But I miss the freedom of being myself, without all the rehearsal and performance. I really do feel like I am putting on an act much of the time. I try to keep myself looking classy, when I'm really kind of a mess. I stumble, I cough at odd times, I fall off piano benches at church, I pass gas every now and then, my voice cracks when I sing--in other words, I'm like all of you! And I'd like to do more than just know that in my head. I'd like to laugh at myself in a way that brings joy rather than self-deprecation. I'd like to be silly without being self-conscious.

Now, I understand there are times when being silly will get you nowhere--or may even get you fired. But most of the time, I think we could all do with a little less performance and a little more natural expression.

My challenge today is to get over ourselves. Being goofy, messy, clumsy, annoying, ditsy, or one of countless other less-than-perfect qualities is actually beautiful. These qualities speak to our common humanity and vitality. The occasional gaffe does not define us, nor does it change how people see us--at least not in the long term.

The best way I can think of to pull off this challenge is to make silly faces at myself in the mirror before I walk out the door. So I challenge you to do the same! Smile, laugh, frown, stretch, open, scrunch, skew--and see the beauty inherent in expression of all kinds. Set yourself free from the need to be perfectly composed. The less seriously you take yourself, the more you will begin to redefine your beauty in terms of your inner beauty rather than your outer "perfection".

You look...

"You look tired."

Really? I was feeling pretty good today, actually. Until now.

"Are you ok? You look upset."

Um, I was just thinking about whether to cook pasta or tacos for dinner.

"Hey, lighten up. You look like you're about to kill someone."

Nope, wrong again. Just enjoying the view out my window.



Why don't people ever tell me "You look like you're glowing today!" or "Wow, you look so refreshed!" Is it really that I look bad all the time, that I'm not getting enough sleep, that I have clinical depression and so cannot muster enough energy to keep a smile on my face? Or is it that the lines of my face were originally drawn in a certain shape, and it takes a lot to align them in a way that fits people's idea of what a "happy person" looks like? Yes, I feel down much of the time. But I also feel good and contented quite often. Yesterday I had a great class in the morning and I was feeling pretty good about the day, but then a colleague hit me with that first line: "You look tired." I did have a rough weekend, so maybe it takes more than a good morning to counteract the effects of two really hard days. Maybe now that I'm in my thirties, I can't spend a whole evening crying and expect my face to show no signs of it the next morning.

(The story of why I was crying is not relevant. No worries, it's nothing too serious. Just beating myself up over a mistake I made. I'm slowly getting over it.)

Okay, to satisfy your curiosity, this is my face when I am not thinking or feeling anything--just letting my face fall as it may:



Do I look mad? Depressed? Bored?

Here I am thinking about something irritating:



Hmm...not too different. It's funny, I just snapped these pics and didn't look at them too closely. It felt like I was really making an effort to show my irritation, but you can't really see that.

Okay, well here I am thinking of something light and happy:



See, again I really felt my smile muscles stretching. I totally felt like I had a big grin on my face, but it looks like a forced smile in this picture.

I am so afraid of being over-the-top, of people thinking that I'm trying to attract attention to myself, that I rein my expressions in to err on the side of masking my feelings. That, or I really do have the "flat affect" that is commonly seen in people with depression. It takes A LOT for me to show strong feelings on my face, no matter how I may be processing on the inside.

But is that okay? Do I need to walk around with a smile stretched across my face in order to make others feel more comfortable around me? The thought of that just exhausts me. Maybe someday, with therapy and medication, I will be able to break into a smile that can light up a room, or a scowl that makes my enemies scurry into hiding. For now, I'm just ho-hum me. I enjoy life enough. I make an effort to let people know that I am happy for them or hurting for them, and then I come home and crash from the sheer weight of my own face. That's a burden I have to live with right now.

What does your face tell the world?

30 Days of Redefining Beauty-Day 11

Today I want to encourage you, especially women out there, to see how beautiful your emotions are. Women who feel a lot, and let people know how they feel, are often criticized for being "too emotional".

What?!

How can it be a problem to feel too many emotions? I understand the point: we can't rely on our emotions when we are making critical decisions. Emotions can be highly volatile and capricious.

So tell us to make sure we know the source of our emotions and explore assumptions we may be making. That's fair. Don't tell us to shut our emotions off.

I talked to a friend today who got tears in her eyes telling me about her feelings regarding a certain situation. I actually think this was the first time I have seen this friend with tears in her eyes. She was beautiful in that moment, partly because I could see into her heart and partly because I could connect to it. That's what emotions do.

Emotions are not to be feared, even when they are making us scream and hit walls and cry for an hour. They are tools for communication. I will never understand why certain methods of communication are more highly favored than others. If we have to get a message across, we will most likely do it in the form that best fits the message to us in that moment. There needs to be much more space for relaying messages through emotion. We all need to become better interpreters of others' emotional messages.

Take what I say with a grain of salt. Obviously, there is a lot more to this issue than I want to delve into here. Let it suffice to say that I am a huge supporter of "overly emotional" women (and men, although that is rare).

Take some time to get in touch with how you are feeling right now. If you could express yourself with as much freedom as a three year old, what would you do? Giggle until you threw yourself into a coughing fit? Throw yourself on the floor and scream until you were red in the face? Explore the beauty of raw emotion and appreciate it in others. This is what separates us from computers. This is my challenge to you.

(Picture taken from http://fineartamerica.com/featured/emotional-woman-natalie-holland.html)