Hello, Halo

WARNING: This blog may not be well organized!

As lame as it may be, I was sitting in the (gasp) cafeteria today. I heard a girl tell another girl that she ‘doesn’t give a fuck what people think.’

Has anyone ever stopped to ponder that thought? It’s completely untrue! Absolutely absurd!

Let’s take my lame-as-hell freshman year of high school, for instance. I was..well..odd, to say the least. I wore all sorts of weird things, I did strange things with my hair, I said things that were pretty out of the ordinary. I also told people that I didn’t care what they thought of me.

On the contrary! I was so concerned about what people thought of me, that I did drastic things. I didn’t want people to think I was a sheep, who went along with the herd. I wanted everyone to think I was my own person, completely void of stereotype and cliche. Looking back, however, I don’t think I could have been more wrong. A lot of my friends were that way as well.. Ya know, COMPLETELY original. Not one of us was even similar to anyone else.
Not.

The truth is, no matter how much you want to think you don’t care. You do. Otherwise, you would be running around naked smearing poop all over everything. And even then, you are doing it in order to get some sort of reaction. Even if that reaction is horror or disgust. The idea that we do things “just ’cause” isn’t very reasonable. Have you ever had a friend who got a really terrible haircut? Or who was wearing something truly heinous? Of course! Everyone has been in that situation. But what do we do? Do we say “Gee, Sally, your new hair cut is..well… Fugly” or “Wow, Jimmy. What in Gods name are you wearing? You look like an idiot”? Of course not. We bite our tounges. And why? Because we care what our friend thinks of us, because we care about our friends. I don’t think you can not care what people think of you, if care about other people. We don’t want our friend to think we are this complete asshole who cares about no one. So we make accommodations.

So, here I am, fellow bloggers! I am here to proclaim what no one wants to admit!
I care what you think of me!
That’s right! I care! I ‘give a fuck’! That’s why I am the way I am. I go to school, not only because I like to learn (because, let’s face it, some days, I want to do nothing at all..going to school forces me out every day), but because I don’t want you to think I’m a bumbling idiot, unable to have intelligent conversation. I work, because I don’t want you to think I’m a lazy slob. I brush my hair because I don’t want you to think I’m filthy. I dress the way I do, because I don’t want you to think I’m an outdated loser. I (also) dress the way I do because I don’t want you to think I’m a complete tool.

That’s not to say, however, that I care what everyone thinks. The kid in Lit with me who thinks the war is ‘kind big’ or the girl in psych who thinks urine has pneumonia.. I’m not all that concerned about how they view me. But my parents, my professors, my employers, my friends, my significant others…Their opinion of me really matters. A lot.

So, I don’t know if this is unreasonable or not, but it’s almost infuriating to hear people say stuff like that. You do care what people think. You do the things you do because that’s who you are, so when someone tells you they don’t like what you wear or how you speak or who you hang around with, it hurts. So why is it such a faux-pas to say it aloud? I care what you think of me because I care about you.

Perhaps the reason is because so many of us are so completely void of emotion. Of course, I would know nothing about that, as I am open so often about everything (oh, I am such a comedian). I don’t know that it’s this way with everyone, but I do have many friends who are this way. We are so afraid of being vulnerable, or hurt, and we’re so afraid of failing and (day I say it?) succeeding, that we will close ourselves to the world. These emotions can become so contradictory, that we pretend they don’t exist, that we don’t care what people think, as it were.

Can you think of an example? I’m serious. Think of time when you have been so overcome by (your supposed nonexistant) emotions, that you try to convince yourself that you just don’t care. My semester at St. Ambrose is an example that might work well. I made a decision (not a good one, might I add) to move out as soon as I got out of high school. I didn’t plan very well, and, in turn, got really stressed out when school came around. I was already so stressed out about money and work, that when I didn’t get along with most of my classmates, I shut down. They had put me in a women’s studies ‘learning community’, which meant that I was with the same girls..in all of my classes. I didn’t get along with any of them, but, as I had shut down, I told all of my friends (note: friends, not classmates) that I didn’t care what they thought of me. Actually, it was impossible for me to care any less.
Not.
I hated the fact that none of my classmates liked me..which was probably irrational, because I didn’t like them, either. I thought they were very close-minded and down-right mean. Which probably means they thought I was the master of abortions or something. But if I didn’t care, the fact that they didn’t like me couldn’t hurt my feelings. (Oh no..did I just admit feelings?)

So, fellow bloggers, readers and passersby, this is the real deal: Despite what one might say, the fact is, we care. We always have and always will. We may say otherwise, in order to come off as ambivalent and cool, as we smoke our cigarettes and drink our expensive wine. Or it could be because it can serve as a temporarily fabulous defense mechanism. We pretend we don’t have emotions, and ‘not caring’ is all part of the facade…but eventually, we’re all going to be forced to deal with who we really are underneath.

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