After White Rock Lake, Marci and I started to head north along a series of parks that should have taken us north to Richland College, but something went wrong, and we ended up on Skillman, and then Forest, and then N. Jupiter Road. If you know anything about the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex, you know that puts you in Garland, and once in Garland, you might as well be on Jupiter. There simply is nothing substantial--other than size--about that town. It's a giant spiraling mess of mostly lower-middle-class suburban sprawl. The only aim in life once one gets into Garland is to get out, which isn't always easy, but LeAnn Rimes somehow did it. Driving through Garland that day, I hoped Marci and I would do the same.
We eventually did escape. We came out near a mall where I once worked at a Pier I-Imports-like store that I'll call Araby. I did a lot of living in that small shop filled with the aroma of incense and candles. I remember sitting on top of a high ladder, taking a break from hanging palm fans on those long metal hangers you hook into the holes of pegboard walls, and seeing Susie down below talking to whoever was cashier then. Oh, she was stunning. She wasn't working. She'd just dropped by, as she put it, "on her way to go clubbing." I had absolutely no interest in her. She was too young to be "out clubbing," maybe seventeen at the time, but I don't think that was it, though I generally wasn't interested in the partying crowd. She was immensely popular with guys, and that should have been it, for she probably had no interest in me either. But, that wasn't it, either. I'm not sure what my lack of interest in her was. That's what made the moment so memorable. I was just up there sitting; I heard talking; I looked down; and there she was, a beautiful Mexican-American woman--she looked to be at least twenty-one, all dressed up--wearing striking red slacks, a shiny black blouse, a red suit jacket, bright red lipstick and these giant red, circular earrings. She looked up at me, smiled, and the light caught her big, brown eyes, and I thought Damn she's beautiful. But nothing changed, and I knew nothing changed. That's when I first became aware that whatever romantic attraction is, it is not simply a result of recognizing someone is beautiful. It's not that generic. There is some deeper pull. Even if it is tied to the physical, it isn't simply the physical--at least not only the surface. There is an undercurrent to love, a song below the song, a deep unstated knowing. I don't think it's necessarily either there or it isn't there, although I did think that at the time. No, romantic love, like all love, can be grown or diminished with the right action. But, none-the-less, romantic love is a non-verbal connection that is more than simple attraction. It is knowing a part of someone without any good earthly reason to have that information. Sometimes it pulls both ways; sometimes it doesn't.
Sitting up on that ladder though, looking at Susie through an unmoved-awe, was an important realization for me. I'd fallen in love with a good friend of mine, Andrea, and it was clear, except as a friend, that she didn't love me back. I had an incredibly low self image and had assumed that her inability to love me was because of the way I looked. In my mind, it had to be that. Nothing else could explain it. We spent hours together, almost every single day. She clearly liked being around me. The only explanation was that I was simply too ugly to love. Sitting up on that ladder, looking down on someone who was clearly gorgeous and feeling nothing made me realize for the first time there might be more to it. I didn't rule out being ugly; it just brought in other possibilities. After all, I knew without a doubt Shideh had been attracted to me, and she was clearly beautiful; I had just sabotaged everything with my insecurities.
Writing this is somewhat of a lie, because up on that ladder, I could not have delineated a thought process anything close to the one I just wrote. It was simply an instant of awareness: Oh you can realize someone is beautiful and feel nothing. I had always assumed if you were beautiful everyone was attracted to you, and if someone wasn't attracted to you, you were ugly. I assumed there had to be some flaw in me to create the hell I went through in junior high and high school.
Later, when I moved back to Utah, and was working at an indoor mushroom farm, I had the same thing happen to me in reverse. In many ways, I was at the lowest point in my life. I'd given up on becoming a writer, moved back home to a town of 2,000 people, and I was working as a janitor. Each day I'd walk down this long, wet concrete hall, a distant light coming in from open-doors at the far end, usually a forklift coming up the hall, headlights reflecting in the puddles of water, and I'd desperately look for this one girl walking all alone, down the one side of the hall, or perhaps with her one and only friend. She wasn't much to look at. Long, stringy, dirty-blond hair, freckles, crooked teeth, not much of a figure--pretty much a body that just went straight down from the shoulder, no hips and insignificant breasts. Yet, each day I looked for her. I had to. It got me through the drudgery of working another day at a job that I knew to my very core had nothing to do with why I was living. I also knew that at least one person who the world found ugly, I found beautiful.
And yet, I never talked to her. Part of me wanted to. She, without a doubt, would have liked it. It was clear that no other guy gave her any attention. But, I also knew the world would find her ugly, and thought--no, that's not the correct word, because there was no reflection involved; wanted is a better fit--I wanted a beautiful woman to validate my existence, and she clearly could not do that.
Although my boys are much more socially skilled than I was and don't seem to have any issues attracting beautiful women, I observe in my children the same flawed thinking--way too much concern for what the world wants to ever experience complete joy. Perhaps, like me, they will learn the skill of ignoring what doesn't matter as they age. Still, in hopes to assist both them and my future grandchildren, I will insert here what should be obvious, but isn't: at least ninety percent of all the people you encounter in your life will form temporary relationships with you, from a few seconds to perhaps a few years. Do not live your life to please those who are insignificant to you--which is almost everyone. Live your life for your God and yourself, and live by courageously giving yourself to the moment you are encountering now. Had I not worried about what the world thought about me asking the droopy girl out, my days in that dismal mushroom farm would have been far less dreary. Instead of looking back on days I could almost tangibly feel sucking my soul out, I'd be looking back and smiling at some small, fond memory. I don't know why I thought that girl was beautiful, but I did. I should have allowed myself to know her. I needed a friend and she did too. The opinions of people who don't matter--what a stupid commodity for which to trade away even one second of your life. Yet, for most of us, learning not to give our lives away to mammon takes practice. Exercise well; it will be worth it. Life starts the moment you stop trying to be what others want and become instead who God intended you to be. Only you can know who that is, and only you will know when life has truly begun for you, but until you find that defining moment (or series of moments) when the world around you largely dissolves, you are not truly living. Life simply is one-on-one communication with the creator. It simply takes on different forms, all connected to love. We each have our own unique language with the divine, and it is that we are each here to discover. Satan's big job is to keeps us distracted from that moment (or moments) of discovery through all that doesn't matter.
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