{"id":53,"date":"2017-05-04T17:08:22","date_gmt":"2017-05-04T17:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-teaching-autoethnography\/chapter\/unfortunate-truths\/"},"modified":"2017-05-04T18:03:01","modified_gmt":"2017-05-04T18:03:01","slug":"unfortunate-truths","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-teaching-autoethnography\/chapter\/unfortunate-truths\/","title":{"raw":"Unfortunate Truths","rendered":"Unfortunate Truths"},"content":{"raw":"
\r\n\r\nI had a lot of anxiety in public when I was little, which is why I think that in my late teen years I have made a hobby out of unabashedly having breakdowns in public. I will walk right into stores like I belong there, tears streaming down my face and sticky black eyeliner marring the backs of my hands and I will make purchases as though I am not even a \u201chot mess.\u201d I\u2019ve cried in restaurants, on subways, in parking lots, on the corners of sidewalks, between library shelves, in convenience stores, under bridges, on buses and behind cars all with a certain degree of shamelessness that is typically reserved for people who aren\u2019t bawling their eyes out. The only exception to this rule is Toys R Us. Anyone really can cry in Toys R Us and still get fairly normal customer service. Once on a sidewalk I overheard a man walking by me say \u201cI\u2019m tired of seeing prostitutes crying on the street\u201d and for whatever reason that made me feel a little better.\r\n\r\nI feel as though the person who knows me best is my mother, which is definitely strange because she is the person who I most often feel misunderstood by. My mother is a somewhat typical suburban mom, she works in a preschool and has a favorite coffee mug and yells \u201cNo one cares!\u201d at reality television shows but continues to watch them anyway. My mother always wanted a girl, but I don\u2019t think I turned out as she expected because she is frequently pushing the idea of being \u201clike all of the other girls.\u201d Unfortunately for my mother, in addition to sobbing on public transit I have a slew of other atypical hobbies, none of which she is particularly fond of. I once spent a month drawing tampons and sanitary napkins and I could see a little piece of her die inside as she slowly began to realize that we would never bond over reality television together.\r\n\r\nThe people who are most honest about what I am like tend to be on dates with me and their unfortunate truths always come veiled as some sort of passive-aggressive compliment. \u201cYou were even more jaded when I first met you than you are now,\u201d someone said to me once over cheap Chinese take-out. He didn\u2019t say anything after that for a little while, and I think that was because he was waiting for me to thank him. \u201cThat was cute,\u201d another once said to me, \u201clike in the way a baby horse tries to walk for the first time,\u201d this was followed shortly after by \u201cYour bangs actually look straight today\u201d and \u201cI bet you don\u2019t even wax your eyebrows.\u201d I think the reason why this happens so frequently is because I have a very specific type, and that type is metrosexual with moderate to severe mommy issues. Mostly these instances are ok but usually when they occur the date ends at dinner.\r\n\r\nIf I were asked to describe myself to someone I would probably leave out the fact that my bangs don\u2019t fall perfectly straight and probably wouldn\u2019t think to disclose any information about my eyebrows. I would describe a person who doesn\u2019t really know how to balance things in her life and I would describe someone with a deep restlessness that I guess I could call a \u201cWanderlust\u201d if I felt the need to romanticize it. I would talk about how I find little things about people endearing, like how they talk about their sister or the way they write their name, and I would also talk about the way that I am repulsed by, without exception, every single person on the subway and will whisper \u201cHow dare you\u201d under my breath if anyone so much as looks at me. Sometimes this is difficult because when someone is bawling on a subway like they are in the privacy of their own home a lot of people, for whatever reason, want to watch.\r\n\r\nI sometimes wonder if that is because they are bored of watching the crying prostitutes on the street.\r\n
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Discussion Questions<\/h3>\r\n