Masked Misfit

Tag: life

  • Imaginary Friend

    We have a card deck of conversation starters for kids that we sometimes use when we sit down to dinner. Last night, one of the questions was about having an imaginary friend. It was something I hadn’t thought about in a while.

    Yes, I had an imaginary friend when I was a kid. No, they weren’t like a wise talking animal or cool creature I made up with my mind that popped up occasionally. As I explained to my kids last night that having an imaginary friend was a pretty normal thing, I also had to think that my particular imaginary friend was not normal.

    You see, my imaginary friend was me. Not like a cute thing where I was just really good at working things out with myself. I imagined a literal, tiny version of myself that lived inside my head. When I needed to talk to them, I would tilt my head and catch them out of my ear in my hand. We’d have a little chat and then I’d gently bring them back up to my ear so they could go back into my brain.

    Occasionally, I would even just let little tiny me take over and dissociate from my own life. It was our little secret. Normally when I did “take them out” of my head, I would do it in the bathroom because that way I wouldn’t get caught. I didn’t know why getting caught was bad, but it definitely seemed like something that I didn’t want to happen.

    Now I don’t remember exactly how old I was when I had this friend. Probably older than most kids with imaginary friends, somewhere between 6 and 10. But I CAN tell you that it was definitely well before the movie Being John Malkovich came out. When I saw that movie, I felt oddly seen.

    So yeah, now you know about my imaginary friend… me.

  • Hair

    Hair can signal so many things. Most of my life, I had long hair like I was supposed to being raised as a girl. I was relatively tomboy-esque as a kid, but I still wanted to keep my long hair. As a young adult, I would often grow my hair out long and then chop it short. I was never fully satisfied with it. When I came out as bi, I cut my hair short again. I am in a straight-passing marriage, and I wanted a signal that I also belonged to the queer community. Hair seemed like the easiest way to do that. I started with an undercut and then my hair started getting shorter and shorter. Eventually I realized I’m also nonbinary. I’m not a stickler about pronouns. I don’t really care what pronouns anyone uses for me. If you ask me or I have to type it into a field, I’ll use they/them. But if someone calls me she or he I’m not bothered. I don’t really talk about my gender very much because I mostly feel like genderless blob which is hard to describe. I do dress/style pretty androgynously, which I think some people catch on to more than others. However, I’m starting to grow my hair back out. I miss the simplicity of a bun or whatever when I can’t be bothered to wash it. And as much as I want to be proud of my body, it’s hard to get past a lifetime of being told what the ideal body looks like, and look… I know I have a hump. I want to cover it with my hair, ok? BUT then I wonder… how will people know I belong in the queer community? How will they know I’m nonbinary if I have longer hair again? Then I tell myself it doesn’t matter because who cares if they know so long as I know? Also body presentation does not equal gender. But THEN I’m like… but I WANT them know. And I don’t want to tell them. And then my brain backfires and I give up on this argument with myself.

    Anyway, just something I’m struggling with right now. Never thought hair could be something I think about so much.

  • Dreams from the Past and Present Part 1

    This is from my dream journal, dated 5/2/2008:

    I dreamt that I was dead, but somehow still slightly alive. I knew I was dead, but I still got on the internet to talk to Sarah. I had to go somewhere but I don’t remember exactly what happened except that Adrienne gave me a big chocolate chip cookie. I remember being in the laundry room. Sarah said I made her stay up so she could talk to me online and I admitted to her that I didn’t want to go to sleep because I was scared that I would start decomposing since I was dead. I was really afraid to go to sleep because I didn’t know what was going to happen. I was afraid I wouldn’t wake up or that when I woke up I would be decomposing. Something else happened, but I don’t remember what it was.

    Dream from last night, 5/28/2025

    I don’t remember how it started, but I was in some kind of hotel suite, and the curtains were closed so it was very dark. I went into the bathroom and turned on the lights, and they were blindingly bright at first. I started to take things out of the drawers in the bathroom, and when I looked at the counter, my own decapitated head was laying on it. The neck was not cut cleanly, but messily hacked. However, the head was still alive. I leaned over and gave myself a kiss. Then I heard someone entering the hotel room and started freaking out about the fact that I had a severed head in the bathroom.

    And that’s all I remember.

    So… something in my subconscious must need to process the reminder of my own mortality every once in a while I guess. The head this is a pretty weird visual to have going on in my mind now though…

  • Sorority Sister

    If you knew me now, you might be surprised to find out that I rushed for a sorority when I went to college. I didn’t know anyone going to my college, and I guess I thought this would be a good way to find friends.

    Mistakes I made:

    1. Not using professional headshots. Yes, you have to submit headshots when you are rushing for sororities. Mine was just taken in my living room. And I had pig tails in it, lol.
    2. Not being socially capable. When you rush for a sorority, you go from house to house and have to talk to a million people you don’t know. It’s horrifying.
    3. Not being pretty/skinny. I was overlooked over by most of the sororities due to this horrible mistake.
    4. Settling. The only sorority I got into was the one that was desperate for members because no one wanted to be in it. Probably where I fit in the best if I’m being honest, but I didn’t have to join since I didn’t really connect anywhere.
    5. Forgetting to be rich. I spent one semester in a sorority and my bank account went to literally zero. I was not getting anything out of it except a lot of pink shirts.
    6. MOST IMPORTANTLY: Not realizing I wasn’t even a GIRL. I never felt fully like I belonged with the girls, but I never considered being a boy. Back then, those were the only options I could comprehend, so I assumed I was a girl. Sororities are inherently quite girly. I not only didn’t fit in with the nerd sorority I landed in, I would have fit in even less with the prettier/girlier versions.

    A couple things made the experience worth it though:

    1. Realizing I didn’t have to pay a million dollars to be part of a group of people I didn’t have anything in common with.
    2. I met some girls in the dorms during rush week that I ended really connecting with. They went into different sororities, but I hung out with them a lot during freshman year before they went to live with the girlies.

    So… why did I think sorority life was for me? I truly have no idea. I was “initiated” in a weird secret ceremony. And then I quit after one semester. It’s not that the people in the sorority were bad people, they were actually very nice. It was more just that, as much as I was used to contorting myself to fit specific molds I thought I was supposed to fill, I couldn’t quite make it work in that particular environment (and more importantly, I went broke trying).

  • Fart Clouds and Mind Reading

    As a child, I internalized so much that I was often afraid that others were able to see me internally as well. Not realizing that most people are mostly thinking about themselves, I thought that everyone was looking at me and seeing the real me peeking out. As much as I tried to blend in, I knew that somehow people could see how much of a freak I really was, that something was inherently wrong with me and it was only a matter of time before it showed up in embarrassing ways.

    One of the things I was really really afraid of was accidentally farting in public. I imagined that there were other kids walking around in the world who would be able to know I farted. In my head they could see fart clouds in the air like water that changes color when someone pees in the pool (is that a real thing by the way? I remember it being such a big threat as a kid, but I never saw it in action). I think I might have held my butt closed so tight to avoid the potential of farting that I made my guts messed up. I’m still dealing with gut issues to this day! And if I thought farting was bad, God forbid I ever had to poop when I was anywhere but in my own home (this is still an issue for me as an grown-ass adult who knows everyone poops). Anyway, how these other children acquired this fart-detecting superpower, I did not know, but there was something in me that truly believed it was there.

    Aside from sensing farts, I also constantly worried about people reading my mind. I tried so hard to fit in, but I knew inside I was different. And I knew that eventually someone was going to figure that out, perhaps through some good old mind reading. Sometimes, I even thought that literally everyone else could read minds except for me. Like they all just knew what everyone was thinking all the time and communicated secretly with each other, but for some reason I got left out of that circle. Sometimes I thought that the whole world was set up just to embarrass me. Imagine how vindicated I felt when The Truman Show came out. I literally thought maybe that was my life as a child! Now what was so interesting about me that everyone needed to watch me? I couldn’t quite figure that out, but it was obviously some humanity cue that I was missing. I felt things so deeply that others were able to brush off.

    So at certain point I convinced myself that at lease some people were capable of reading my mind. Again, this would be my peers. I did not concern myself with adults at the time for some reason, but I knew there were kids out there just taking my thoughts and turning them into laughs. Those JERKS! Sometimes, just walking around school, I would loudly think to myself “If you are reading my mind right now, STOP!” As though if they knew that I knew it was happening, it would prevent it.

    Where did this type of anxiety come from? Absolutely no idea, but it haunted me for a long time. Sometimes I still think someone might be reading my mind, particularly if a random inappropriate thought pops into my head for a second. I’ll think “I can’t think that, someone will know!” And push it away.

    Anyway, anyone else have this kind of paranoia as a child? No? Just me? Cool. 🙂