I think about myself too much

Well, the world is ending soon.

I’m on the train.

Philadelphia is an hour from the place I stayed with my closest friend for three days in the middle of the week. She drove me to the station and we talked about love.

I think she’s a brilliant writer. We write differently. I used to think I couldn’t be a good writer because I couldn’t write like other people. I couldn’t write prettily, but just exactly how I felt. Not beautiful. It comes out in jolts, and periods come whenever a thought ends. And sentences begin when a new thought begins.

She is thoughtful. We talk about faith.

Paoli station is a stop on the way home from Philadelphia. I’ve never stopped there. I’ve only ever seen it from the train window. Never knew how to pronounce it correctly because I always sit in the quiet car. Pay-Ole-Lee. Is my best guess. But then, there’s the city of Reading. Red-ing. Not, Reed-ing. Or Hallam. Hell-am, not, Hall-am.

She tells me the things she struggles with. And I tell her how I feel, too. And we speak so easily and equally, in a way I think two writers speak easily. Not prettily, the whole time.

I think sometimes about how interesting my conversations would be in a movie. I always think about how my life could be viewed if it was a movie. I always wonder if I’m saying things that might seem interesting to an observer. Am I saying anything important at all if it can’t be found interesting to someone else listening?

I look out the train window randomly despite knowing it is already dark and I won’t see anything but my reflection. But sometimes I catch the brief whiteness of a lamp where the dark space is very slightly illuminated, and sometimes I can see a glimpse of a house, a garage, a porch.

I learned recently about the theory of the quantum observer. I am not a scientist. I was good at it, once, a while ago, when I was smarter than I was thoughtful. I think much more than I did then, but I’m sure I know less now than I did then.

I’ll try to explain what I understand of it. This is something I’d tell my sister about and she’d probably just tell me all of the ways that I’m wrong, instead of thinking about the poetry of it. I’ve never been one to read poetry, but I’ve always loved things that seemed poetic.

This idea of the quantum observer is that when you observe something, you change its state of being. That’s to say, that conscious perception influences the behavior of a system.

Arriving at Downingtown, now. More lights, more to look at outside the window. But my reflection is still there. I can see the curve of my cheek, the slight protrusion of my lips in thought, I can see the furrowed brows and the deep blackness of the space where my eyes are. I can see the length and highlights of my nose, I can see the sharp decline of my forehead.

“Men are also just weird about you,” my friend said in a restaurant.

“Men are just weird in general,” I said.

“No,” she said. “People are weird about you.”

I’ve been hearing that a lot lately. That people are ‘weird’ about me. I heard it from a childhood friend the other day. I think she used to have an idea of me that she had only just realized recently, was wrong.

We discussed my desperate effort to graduate high school early. The separation of myself from friends when I was in grief. The feeling of being an outsider among wealthy students. The men who lied and who people believed instead of me. The male teachers who showed too much interest, the comments from others about my character.

“I didn’t realize she hated me, I always thought we’d been friends,” I said. About a girl we both knew in high school.

“Yeah,” my friend looked puzzled, as if it was a shock to discover this hatred was one sided. “People are… so weird about you.”

“Well, I am sort of weird.”

“No,” another strange realization in her face, in her eyes. “They were really weird towards you.”

I see myself sometimes and I feel like it’s for the very first time. I can recognize myself in a photograph, but in the mirror it almost feels like a shock. I have no idea what I look like. People tell me that I am pretty, but what if I had been told something else. I’d have no choice but to believe them. I cannot remember what I look like.

When you observe something, you change its state of being. There’s no way to observe something without changing it. Interactions will evolve the system, and interactions can measure a system, but you cannot measure a system without influencing it.

The system before observation exists in a state of infinite values. A superposition of potential outcomes. When there is no observer, it is everywhere, but when there is one, it develops a single solution.

The observer then becomes the measurement. There is no way to remove the observer, no way to measure without changing what you are measuring, because there is no way to measure without interacting, and interacting means change. There is no such thing as a passive observer.

I feel a little bit like that. Not the observer, but the system. I change depending on who is looking at me. Who I am changes from person to person depending on what I think they think I am like, or what I think they want me to be like. When I’m alone, I feel everywhere. But when I am being looked at, measured, I become one single thing. Each measurement depends on who the observer is.

Sometimes, I imagine that I am being observed, just to feel grounded in one thing. In my bedroom, there are multiple mirrors on each wall. I like to see what I look like when I wake up in the morning, or else I might not know who’s awake, or who is that woman in my bedroom.

“Would you ever consider becoming a model?” A cinematographer friend asked me this. “I know you don’t like memorizing lines, so I won’t make you act in any of my movies, but why wouldn’t you want your picture taken?”

“I’m not tall enough.”

“Ok but what if that didn’t matter, what if it wasn’t for a runway?”

“Well, it does matter. The clothes come in specific sizes already, even just for editorial and advertisements.”

“But, no, not modeling for clothes, but for art, for photographs,” he seemed almost frustrated. “We could find the perfect lighting that makes your face look the most flattering. We could try different angles, and it could just be your face, if you want.”

“I feel uncomfortable in front of a camera.”

“Even if it was just me taking your picture?”

“I don’t think I really like being looked at.”

“Come on, yes you do.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think that I do.”

I remember being maybe twelve or thirteen years old and wearing a bikini at a friend’s party. I noticed an older man staring at me often. He photographed me and lied, pretending he was taking a picture of his son.

“He’s being so silly,” he said.

“No, I’m not,” the little boy said.

Sometimes, I really do hate to be looked at. I think I am afraid of being too obvious of a person, and wished sometimes I could go unnoticed completely. I used to express myself through my clothing, I was flamboyant and I enjoyed myself, but now—I wore the same jacket all winter despite having such a large collection of coats.

I don’t like the idea of a photo. It’s unchanging and unchoreographed. It isn’t catered to an individual. I want to be seen on a case by case basis. I don’t think I could be a person, the same one, all the time for everybody. It just doesn’t work that way, for me. I’m a different one each and every time.

I have always been a strange, sudden creature. I will be often carefree, silly and thoughtless, then, when I am comfortable I’ll say something odd, something too strange.

“Well, the world is ending soon,” I said.

“Yeah, global warming, and all. It’s getting pretty bad,” a friend responded.

“That’s why I’d like to do so much, now. Experience as many things as I can, before that happens. We’re basically middle aged at this point.”

“Why would you say that?!” She looked shocked and sort of upset.

I should be more careful with my words. Sometimes, I forget. When I was young, I thought it was difficult to be liked. It is easy to be liked when you say less of what you have in your head. Not because I am unkind, but I think I’m just a bummer sometimes. I don’t mean to be.

I enjoy sitting in the quiet car of the train, there’s no sounds except the sounds of the machine I’m in. And I can work easily. There’s no phone calls I end up eavesdropping on out of curiosity. There’s no interesting people to talk to instead of writing. My mother texts and asks when I’ll be home. It’s late, but not too late, that I’m arriving. We’ll have to drive another half hour home afterwards in the dark.

I sometimes want to be human in a different, a new way. Or maybe I just want to be human in the way everyone else is. But I want to be human in a way that’s new for me. I want to live without having to pretend, without having to change constantly, I want to exist in one single way. I want warm, soft hands and dark, comforting eyes. I want to stop wondering if I am being odd or upsetting someone with my tone of voice, I want not to think so much about myself.

But there is no way to observe something without changing it.

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