Mirror, mirror

I'm thinking I engaged in a bit of "overshare" with my Human Sexuality class yesterday. Maybe I did. Maybe I didn't.

Something I got out of the whole show, however, was just how absurdly difficult it is to get a good handle on how other people see you.

I keep thinking this is a skill I will somehow miraculously develop. I've also been thinking it's a skill that other people have and which I lack through some constitutional shortcoming. I've thought for some time that I was just born without a good mirror. Or that some kind of childhood trauma is responsible for my inability to see myself.

It has also been my assumption that I have been "developing" this skill in school.

Yesterday, however, I found out that I have not, in fact, developed that capability in the least. Furthermore, I'm beginning to believe it is not really a "skill" that anyone has.

Rather, every single goddamned way in which we believe we are perceived by others is nothing but a projection of our own. Our intuition might tell us a thing or two. But when it boils down to it, everything we believe others think about us is no more than a guess, an assumption, a wild stab into the wilderness of mind-reading.

I have spent the better part of the past two months thinking that just about everyone I encounter in school thinks I'm a grumpy, loud-mouthed, obnoxious bitch with a chip on her shoulder. Most of this sense seems to be generated by my experiences in Play Therapy and Thursday nights in my practicum. But I have generalized it to all other classrooms and all other group environments.

And as I admitted to S2 and HGM yesterday at lunch, I also projected a whole heapin' bunch of hoo-haw onto specific classmates I don't know very well at all.

And yet, yesterday, a few of these people made comments to me following the presentations of our boxes that completely contradicted the ways in which I believed I was being perceived by them. I could have decided that they were just being nice -- or even lying to me -- to cover the negative feelings they actually have. Except for that they sounded genuine when they spoke to me. And one of them even left a nice note on my car after she left class early.

So. Hmmm....

What does this mean?

That I should give up the whole game of trying to know how I'm perceived by others? That it's a useless undertaking, a waste of time and energy? That no one can know how others see them?

Or does it mean that I'm just really, really bad at it?

Either way, I guess one useful approach -- in as much as my experience of the world goes -- is simply to decide that other people see me in a very positive light. That I'm an intelligent woman with tremendous courage and a marvelous sense of humor. That I'm wonderfully complex and have not just the capacity to be, but hold the promise of, being a skilled clinician. That the warmth in my heart ... shows.

And with a little effort, I'll soon be convinced that everyone thinks I'm very, VERY sexy. And that every time a lovely woman thinks or says, "Someone just dip me in honey and throw me to the lesbians," I'll be the honey-licking lesbian who comes to mind. (I mean: Why not?)