dear sue

Dear sue,
Thank you for the figurine! The coincidental resemblance to me is almost startling. I love it. I'll also try to not hate it.
Hate it, you say? Whatever for?
It's kind of ugly.
Bearing in mind that "ugly" is a relative term...
Yet also not.
For that figurine captures one of my looks that i've always wanted to disown. I don't mean "expression", either. I've always been aware that i have two fairly distinct looks, and whichever one you get is dependent upon...well, nothing more than timing, as it seems to have nothing to do with lighting or grooming. For most of my adult life i've been aware that, more so than the average person, sometimes i look attractive and other times not.
I don't think it's in my head, either. My level-headed friend shelly once said that sometimes i look yummy, other times...pheh. In some of my photos, i think i look like a movie star...in others, a dog's breakfast. Perhaps by and large, this is a good thing. It's character building to have a built-in vanity buffer. Still, how does one not become a little schizophrenic?
I know, i know, all this focus on beauty...understand, i've spent a lifetime trying to rise above such shallowness. To not judge myself or others based upon our physical shells. In some ways, perhaps i've succeeded. Yet sometimes, i feel i've gotten nowhere. It's such a dysfunctional, dehumanizing culture. We spend our entire lives leveraging our primary asset (ourselves) to try to get the most love and happiness and comfort we can. Nothing is given, and nothing can't be taken away in the blink of an eye. Feelings of self-worth and attractiveness become so frail and contingent. Wealth and brains and personality go a long way...yet each one of us is forever a bit (or a whole lot) scarred by the relationship we have with that face and body staring back in the mirror. It can be so hard to remember that that's us...but it's not "US", not by any definition that matters. My own personal cross is that i'm attractive enough to have been chosen more than once in the theater world as a romantic "leading man" (try not to let THAT go to your head), yet knowing my curious looks-duality, a little piece of my mind probably always wonders how many of my life's rejections, in romance and elsewhere, were just a matter of bad timing? If a certain conversation, or chance meeting, had happened one day earlier or later, maybe my life would have gone in entirely different directions? Most people have to deal with not looking the way they want to look. I have to deal with not looking the way i look.
It can be so hard (impossible, really) to not live in one's head. So hard to experience any emotions mindlessly, free of the fear of loss.
And it galls me to know that i agree with shelly! Sometimes the face i see in the mirror is ugly. And yet i know, i absolutely know, that i have a healthier self-image than most.
What a mindfuck, this world of ours.
Anyway, i'm going to cherish this figurine. The symbolic value of doing so is immeasurable.
So for that (and a depth of response that you probably never imagined coming), i thank you. I'm touched that you "recognized" and thought of me.
warmly,
wrob