Spacing Out
I recently had a little realization. Well, let's be honest—a little breakdown. Now to first qualify my crisis, let me explain that I am one of those tech-savvy socialite teens with a profile in every little web host that will have me. Xanga, MySpace, Facebook, I've done my best to leave my mark on each of them. In the face of a summer with very little to do, I've pathetically resigned myself to perusing friends' spaces in search of some satisfying vicarious thrill. What I've discovered, however, is something much deeper and more frightening—I am a little, blank, default box in a completely personalized world.I feel like everyone knows who they are now that they've been given an opportunity to express themselves. My peers post a series of photos that best capture their inner angst, and these pictures truly do string together some logical portrait of these people as I know them (or don't know them). When given space to "describe themselves," they really do it. Whatever happened to blindly bumbling through adolescence with the aid of cheap thrills and humiliations to spare? When did we become cultured young people? Am I the only one who will have to wait until I'm in an overstuffed leather chair across from some West Side Manhattan therapist to "truly recognize my inner self?"
In my last few weeks as a removed social leper, I've also skimmed the websites of acquaintances and friend-of-friends. Not stalking, mind you, purely research. I became convinced that if I could somehow understand how everyone else had packaged themselves up with such nice background images and a little ribbon on top, maybe I could somehow accomplish it too. The more I saw, the worse I felt. So many of them had such a continuity to everything. There were people with ambitious book lists who were, in turn, serious in all their photos and clever in their blogs and self-focused diatribes. I was reduced to wondering if Franklin Gothic Medium was a font that truly captured my ambitions in life.
Does a four-sentence blog about finding the perfect necklace yesterday count as a valid contribution to this world suddenly so obsessed with classification and order? It's like the American Dream of yesteryear has permeated the cyber world; everyone gets a fenced-in prototype Levittown "little box" to "personalize" with a few cookie-cutter customizable options. Once we've established that the Victoria's Secret Model I most resemble in personality is Giselle, how do I translate that into my perception of who I am? How does that influence my relationships and interactions in the real world? Maybe this does equip me with the skills I need to maintain healthy and successful relationships; I can just search for all the other Giselles through some quiz site and then I'll have a truly successful circle of friends.
I'm sorry, but it does not work like that. Maybe I'm just saying this because I'm upset that I can't do what seems to be so easy for everyone else. Maybe I'm just jealous because, unlike the rest of the MySpace clientele, I haven't yet found a glitter message that perfectly captures the person I am. In fact, that's probably a big part of it. But I guess I just want to prove to myself that it's okay to not have everything together right now. I don't have to find someone I want to be and ask how they got that bathroom-mirror shot to turn out just so. Maybe I just need to get a "This-Is-The-Me-I-Am-Today-Which-May-Be-Entirely-Different-TomorrowSpace." Hey, that's a good idea. I think I'll write a blog about it.
Lizzie Schiffman attends the Unitarian Church of Hinsdale, in Hinsdale, IL.
For more information contact youth @ uua.org.
Last updated on Saturday, April 19, 2008.
