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Intransient Observer
Contributed by
SensitiveSoAbused
on
Sunday, 29th January 2006 @ 06:20:34 PM in AEST
Topic:
didactic
|
Intransient Observer
Today I saw one of the most chilling things I think I have ever seen.
I was standing at a bus stop, waiting to get on, when I notice a little baby. This was the most adorable little baby I have ever seen, and I delighted myself watching it. In my peripheral I noticed someone else watching it, and smiling, and so I naturally turned my gaze to them.
What I saw was one of the few things that have ever actually frightened me. Terrified me. Literally. The kind of fear where when you see it at a glance, your body gets an electric shock, you blink and startle, and whatever it is appears huge in your mind for a second.
The woman was probably in her fifties. It was impossible to tell. Her face was so grotesquely mutilated and deformed, she looked like you may imagine a real-life Hunchback of Notre Dame would. Her beady eyes were sunk deep into her skull, and the rest of her narrow face protruding unnaturally. Her skin assumed the same weathered, course leathery look as Freddy Kruger. She wore a hairstyle dating back to the sixties, and I am certain it was a wig.
This is a kind of fear that still haunts me. It is the kind of fear you got as a child, not wanting to be in the dark, or walk into that next room, because you are certain the monster in whatever dream you had will be there, even if you know that that is ridiculous. Another thing that has always horrified and tortured me since I was a kid, is if I get a terrifying image stuck in my head, it will stay there, and worse, I will helplessly move toward it, until I uncontrollably encounter it in the most vile way, usually by licking and touching it. Imagine this on the image of a rotting human carcass, a villain in a scary science fiction movie with well done make-up when you were a kid. It’s something I’ve never been able to stop, and it makes me shudder and cringe and writhe in my bed, as it did tonight, with the image of this woman’s face.
I assumed that she was some sort of an unfortunate burn victim. I’ve heard of bad burns literally melting and deforming the structure of your skin.
I always have trouble when it comes to these kind of people, who have some sort of physical oddity that makes them drastically noticeable from the rest of the crowd. Because you never know the nature of someone’s self-esteem, when you even look at them, you feel that they think you are staring at them, (which in a way you are, because it is extremely difficult to look at these people like you would anyone else, without a strange feeling of stupefying amazement and itching curiosity) and if you constantly avert your eyes, that may make them feel bad as well. And it is extremely difficult to satisfy that deep natural curiosity by studying them, and trying to take small glances all the time.
I am about as meddlesome as Curious George in these circumstances, and as usual, my curiosity got the best of me. I walked right up to the lady, looked her straight in the eye (a picture that still haunts me) hesitated for a split second trying to best arrange my sentence, then said, “I’m sorry – I don’t mean to be rude – but what happened??” She looked away and waved her hand in a tired, despairing way, and I said, “No? …ok.” and walked back to where I was standing before. I wish I had never laid eyes on her. I wish never to see her again.
As an actor and a naturally empathetic person, I always try and put myself into a person’s shoes. As a person with a disability. who knows how it feels to feel horrid when people stare at me or mention something about it, I always feel very sad for these people. What utter unhappiness and difficulty that woman must face on a daily basis, where people stare or avert their eyes, and avoid her like I admittedly will if I see her again. Where every day you see the look in someone’s eyes that shows for a split second you terrified them. And unfortunately, there is always the possibility that they had been that way since birth, which would feel all the worse, when someone asked them what happened.
In circumstances such as these, I always try and imagine what the person would have looked like before whatever tragic instance happened. I try to imagine the psychological torture of waking up one day to realize you’ve become a hideous monster. The utter depression and dejection resulting from people reacting to you like they do. It is very difficult, to realize that they are human as well, and occupy the same first-person existence as you do.
However, there are some exceptions, which is partly why I asked. For example, I got on the bus one day (you meet all sorts on the bus) and I saw a man missing two legs and some fingers and most of an arm. Being the curious man that I am with no particular inhibitions, I asked him what happened. He cheerfully retailed to me the story of how, just a few weeks previous, he contracted an unknown form of meningitis that at his body away and threatened to kill him all within the space of two or three weeks. I was astonished at his perspective, and his ability to grip the situation and deal with it positively as he did. He was literally the happiest person I remember seeing to this date. It was truly inspiring.
And of course, there are the adverse experiences that are terribly uncomfortable, like what happened with the woman I ‘met’ today. A week or two back, I was on the bus (go figure) and a girl, about sixteen, stepped on with a couple of bound stacks of paper. She stood almost directly in front of me, and shortly I noticed a peculiar tendency of hers. She noticeably twitched. Frequently, her head would jerk and twitch about, a kind of mini spasm.
Assume my curiosity once again. After a few minutes of watching her, easily this time because she was facing away from me, I pardoned myself and asked if I could ask her a personal question. She consented. “Why do you twitch?” She immediately stiffened up and turned away.
‘No, you can’t ask that question. … Thanks for reminding me that I’m a FREAK.’
“… I really didn’t mean to. In fact, I limp, and for the longest time, I felt like a freak when someone acknowledged it, or even noticed it. Then I just realized that some things are the way they are, and there’s no sense in wasting needless emotion on it.”
‘Well, I’d rather just pretend that I don’t, and deny it and deal with it that way. Until someone comes along and reminds me of it.’
“Ok, I’m sorry.”
Soon after, I decided to get her mind off the fact that she was a ‘freak.’ So I asked her about the papers she had with her. She replied that it was her first day on a new job, going about and delivering fliers to people’s doorsteps. She stepped off the bus to a ‘good luck’ from me, feeling noticeably better.
There have been numerous occasions where things like any of these has happened. I almost always take the chance that they will react the way that one man did, feeling that I may as well take a chance, since they could literally react in any way. More often then not, they react negatively, but I still prefer this to not asking at all, because not doing so means I may possibly be passing up a chance for a great learning experience.
So, this lady at the bus stop. After a few more curious glances (one which uneasily looked her directly in the eye) the bus came. I step on the bus, and glanced back briefly to see if she was still waiting over there. Out of the corner of my eye I come to know that she is directly behind me. This is where the childlike fear of a close proximity came into play. I shuddered, and swiped my pass, watching the driver’s face when I moved out of the way, to gauge any reactions he may have had. The lucky son-of-a-***** was wearing sunglasses. Oh, how I had wished I had sunglasses, today, and many other times when I wish I was an unseen, transient observer. If I could, I’d spend half my life simply watching and studying people. It is extremely hard to really study a person’s body language, facial expressions, voice tones and mannerisms, when they know you are looking at them. Glancing really doesn’t work. I used to stare without abandon, but I know I feel uncomfortable when people stare at me, so I don’t any longer. It frustrates me how children and babies can stare captivated at people and everything, and it is perfectly okay, but when adults stare for the same reason babies do, to absorb knowledge about their surroundings, people are immediately uncomfortable with it. Especially if you are a tall, dark male, like I am. Seriously.
So now it’s four thirty am the next day, and I’ve been typing for the better part of an hour. I laid restlessly in my bed, being haunted by those same childhood fears, and saying this entire report in my head, until I decided to get up and write it down, after getting up to go to the washroom and looking behind and ahead of me through the dark house, to make sure that lady was not there.
[2006-01-29 04:53:29]
Copyright ©
SensitiveSoAbused
... [
2006-01-29 18:20:34]
(Date/Time posted on
site)
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Re: Intransient Observer
(User Rating: 1 )
by bobotheclown on
Sunday, 29th January 2006 @ 06:38:05 PM AEST
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a Message)
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Interesting story... I liked the "moral" about
not judging people. I'm not to sure what else
to say.
Bobo (Joel) |
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Re: Intransient Observer
(User Rating: 1 )
by Former_Member on
Thursday, 16th February 2006 @ 03:11:24 AM AEST
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| hmm...despite your good intentions...i think you should be more sensitive to other people's feelings...asking someone why they have an abnormality does not pass as innocent, but more-so ignorant of other's dignity and self esteem. Especially to people you don't even know. Wouldn't you know this, your name being "SensitiveSoAbused"? |
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