I lost my debit card today. UGH. Annoying. I hate losing things.
You know how you probably have one thing about yourself you really dislike? Something you say, like “literally” or “I guess” or “it’s funny,” or your posture, or how you always look at the ground when you walk instead of looking in front of you? Clumsiness is mine. There is not a glass of water I’ve drank in the last, I don’t know, five years that I haven’t spilled down the front of my shirt. It’s a miracle my computer still works, since I keep it under my desk just under where I keep a cup of coffee. There have been close calls.
It used to be these really dark circles under my eyes. Picrew saved me from that neuroticism, of all things. Not like it saved me from the circles themselves — I’ve always had them, and I think I always will despite spending a hundred dollars on retinol night cream back in college. No, it’s just that when I would make myself in the little character builder, I could usually toggle on an option for dark circles. Most Picrews are radically inclusive.
So that’s how I got over my dark circles: not by changing them, but by building an image of myself, outside of myself, that included them as a feature and not a flaw.
I don’t think I can do the same thing with clumsiness. After all, I can’t mechanically see my dark circles most of the time. They don’t affect me. And they carry this sleepless air which I’m really drawn to, on account of being a writer and also actually having insomnia. Even me saying, “I have insomnia,” feels a little like peacocking.
Clumsiness doesn’t signal anything. Today I lose my debit card, tomorrow I might blurt out the wrong pronouns or something. I mean, that’s an extreme example. But isn’t the opposite of clumsiness thoughtfulness?
(On second thought, that’s not true.)
Oh well. For what it’s worth, I don’t think I’m supposed to come to a conclusion about all of these things. I froze my card. I also made a clumsiness self-portrait in Ena’s Dreamcore Picrew. It’s a little on the nose, and I think it’s missing something, but I had a lot of fun.
