This is my tale which I have told.

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This is my tale which I have told

This is my tale which I've told over & over & over to myself & to my psychiatrist. I wonder why men become infatuated with me. Seemingly on the basis of the merest passing glance. Am I a shape-shifter, so that the beholder's eye sees what it wants to see --& suddenly I've become the girl of a beholder's dreams? Is infatuation caused perhaps by something in the water? Chlorine? Fluoride? Love potion? Something in the food? Oysters? Ashwaganda? Glyphosate? Stranger things have happened--Ergot in the grain crop fueled the Salem witch trials. Recently, I brought up this infatuation question with my psychiatrist & wondered out loud whether men have a quirky tendency to fall for me, or at least for their image of who I am. He laughed & asked was I so needy & self-centered that I needed to believe I'm irresistible? That men will fall all over themselves to compete for my attention? 'I'm a man,' he said, '& I'm not in love with you. What do you say to that?' I followed up with 'Girl students in my graduate psych 708 class come up to me, in the hallway or the restroom, & ask me 'what's so special about your charms that Professor X openly flirts with you?' I answer, 'I don't know!' My psychiatrist changed his tune. 'If what you say is true–then maybe there's some seed of truth in what you claim.' Nonetheless, in his case notes, he rates my ability for self-awareness & insight as 'Fair'. FAIR?? He also notes that I'm an unreliable narrator. It's true. Anxiety takes over, reaches out, strangleholds my guts, makes me sweat, makes me blush red as a traffic light. Anxiety paints me as an unreliable narrator. Along the lines of Pinocchio, Big Bad Wolf, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Bob Dylan, Elon Musk. Within the counseling department, grapevine chatter identifies me as the mousy blonde white girl-- NOT words I'd use to describe myself, but at least that description doesn't refer to me as unreliable. I work as a tutor on campus, manage to pay my tuition, show up in class every time, turn in my assignments by deadline, get my hours documented & signed. Yesterday, when I stopped by the counseling department office to get a signature for my practicum documents, two university assistants caught sight of me, turned to each other, & improvised, 'You're NOT latching onto him?? Girl!--Are you crazy??' They got their point of view across & they didn't expect an answer. It didn't occur to me to speak up to explain or defend myself. I painted myself into a corner with a foolish swirl of blue paint which drops me into Picasso's blue period then I've bled red paint onto a Salvador Dali canvas where time stands still & melts into itself, it's so tired of waiting. I pass the time trying to decide whether it's worse to be called a mousy little blondie or to be characterized as an unreliable narrator. An unreliable narrator??! By God! It rankles far more to be called an unreliable narrator! Almost as embarrassing as when it's whispered around without any evidence that I carry a sexually-transmitted disease & in fact passed it on to an innocent. You wonder what IS unreliable?? THAT is unreliable rumor mongering & sour grapes. That is limbo. An unreliable narrator lies to herself, lies to others, blames everyone else for problems, is money hungry, grasping, manipulative, speaks sweet sugar unto her boss, her doctor, her lawyer, her social worker, & heaps torrents of venomous contempt upon her parent, her teacher, her child, or her servant, goes home, kicks the puppy, steps on the kitten, then swears she witnessed someone else inflict the injuries. An unreliable narrator claims she was raped by the garbage man. Unreliable does a favor for miss jackson, an elderly neighbor, goes to the safeway for her, buys metamucil, delivers it, explains that the wind blew the receipt out of her hand, accepts miss jackson's sincere thanks, & shortchanges her by five or ten dollars, a tip which unreliable believes to be her due. Unreliable is a mother who's late two days in a row to pick up her child from daycare or kindergarten. Unreliable says she'll call & doesn't call. Unreliable promises to take out the trash & then forgets. Unreliable throws the baby out with the bath water. Unreliable steals clothing from a laundromat dryer because no one was watching that laundry. Unreliable narrator breaks an empty grape juice bottle, hammers off a chunk of glass, drops it into a freshly opened bottle, & sues the company for $25,000 for hazardous objects in food. Unreliable purchases clams at the seafood market, cracks off a sharp piece of clam shell, drops it into an opened can of snow's new england-style clam chowder, then sues the company for a million dollars because she could've choked on that clam shell which somehow found its way into her steamy bowl of soup--she could have cracked her tooth on it. Unreliable steals your new water bottle that your family bought you for back-to-school -- & laughs about it to his friends. Unreliable swears to you that she'll keep your secret, then blabs it to someone else because it's too good to keep to herself. Unreliable cheats on a test. Unreliable lies on a job application. Unreliable sleeps with someone else & swears she loves only you. Unreliable signals that he's interested in you romantically but he's also interested in that other girl. Unreliable says she'll be there at eight a.m. and doesn't show up 'til nine a.m. Unreliable vows through sickness & in health & bails out on you when you fall sick. Unreliable is hired to take care of your baby & secretly scares your baby, believing that psychological bruises won't show. Unreliable says let me borrow money, I'll pay you back, & never pays you back! Unreliable swears that day is night & night is day. Unreliable undermines you to your friends-- 'why doesn't he get a better job? why doesn't he tell his father to leave him alone? why doesn't he treat me better?' Unreliable fails to post big signs on the beach warning about treacherous rip currents that carry children out to sea where they go under & drown. It's subtly & blatantly brutal for a psychiatrist to call a client an unreliable narrator. It's just two of us who read the case notes, psychiatrist & patient. A psychiatrist is someone considered infallible, who knows his diagnostic & statistical manual, edition V, backwards & forwards, who's considered to know all about reliability, someone who's guaranteed to be super-reliable by virtue of his impressive PhD education at Cambridge, his original research, his esteemed family background, extensive professional training, not to mention his upstanding & outstanding minnesota multiphasic personality inventory. This morning on the healthcare website, I checked my psychiatrist's case notes from our most recent session. Sure enough, there it is in black & white. A new observation. 'Speaks with very little affect.' What does he expect?--Miss Drama Queen, who deep-voices 'my body is my instrument! My voice is my soul!'? Oh,--For crying out loud. Anything said or done to me, -- I've armored up. Anyway, instead of arguing with my psychiatrist about whether I'm an unreliable narrator or not, or whether I feel enough feelings when I talk to him, my question that I ask myself is-- Why didn't I do the mentally healthy thing, the right thing? Make an appointment to see professor X during his office hours. Ask, "Is it accurate to say that you flirt with me in class?' Pause, listen to what he has to say. Me: 'I call it showboating.-- Did you approach me with a shy little smile- say you'd like to get to know me better? Did you ask me, 'do you possibly feel the same?' No, you didn't. All pride & brag & bluster. Did you think you'd win me over by enquiring, in front of the entire class, 'is one of you her girlfriend?' Then suggesting, in front of the whole class, mind you. that you & I take a motor trip to wine country during spring break?! As if I'd just plunk my butt down in your motor car for the golden opportunity to open my mouth for a treat?! Then pause & listen to what he has to say. If I'd had the sense to do that, why– I would've tamed him & he & I would've married & stayed married to this day.-- Where does my common sense go? Out the window. Ha!--Where did I go from there? Took the easy way, bandaged in armor head to toe, sloganeering--hopped on the bandwagon of the prevailing party line,--- patriarchy rules, a female is only a pawn in their game, William Zanzinger wasn't so bad, Hattie Carroll had it coming–she probably was an unreliable narrator. Talking myself into a state of feminist falsehood threw me in with my old friend, Anxiety. I was expelled from graduate counseling & expelled from university. I started all over, psych 101, at city college. There's always room at the bottom.--Not saying that city college is the skids! Not at all. Psych students at city become peer counselors. & remarkable, reliable friends. #