But, see, honey. I could go forever without comparing us. I would just never turn my gaze back on myself. I would watch you with the constant attention and adoration of a border collie and be thrilled. I would never wonder how we look against each other, because I mostly only ever look outward. People would compliment the blog, and I would say, 'oh man, Sherry has been en fuego. Did you catch this amazing post or this other one?' And they would say 'those were good, but would you say that's the good part of the blog?'. 'Hell yes. God, remember when she wrote that other thing and she nailed it so completely that everyone was crying and we decided that we are all beautiful humans underneath and then there was world peace? That was so great.' And if someone finally said 'but what about your own posts?', I'd be all 'What? Huh? I wrote some stuff, I guess.'
I'm like this all the time, with everyone. Everyone I know is fucking amazing and blows me away. One of my Karens is a math professor which is already smokin' hot, and she makes ice cream and miraculously hosted me that time when I needed help so much. Another of my Karens lives near you and she is fucking awesome. She can do ANYTHING, and by that I mean marshal any force in the universe to her will and she is also damn funny and it is so great to watch her parent her beautiful boys and I hope so much she moves here next. My other other Karen is a dancer, who goes to Barcelona to dance and is also incredibly in every moment and so beautiful you gasp when you see her but she is intensely interested in everyone she meets anyway even though I'm not San Francisco hip like she lives and breathes.
I could do that with any one of my friends and most of my acquaintances. I think people rock. But if you force that back on me or ask how I fit with that crowd, I'm mostly baffled. 'Well, I'm good at getting them all in the same place and I never run out of food.' This isn't false modesty; I do know when I do good work. I would just never think "I'm the smart, thoughtful one as contrasted with the dreamy poet" because I would never think about me at all. I look outward in general and over towards you when I'm here. I wouldn't get low self-esteem from being pinholed against you, because I don't hold a sense of myself to compare to you. My head is full of what you just said, or the next thing we'll do, or some other piece of the world.
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I will, however, get frantic if I think that I'm about to lose another friend because she got intimidated. I can't handle that without huge old fears rising in my throat. Twice in my life I've been completely ostracized, some of which I mark down to being a smartypants. I get rejected by men for being too much, more than they want to keep up with. They tell me that's why they can't be with me. I see people getting twitchy and self-conscious when they get intimidated. There's a way they shrink down, and I can tell I'm about to lose them. Cajoling and being friendly never entirely brings them back; they're always too deferential after that. People spontaneously tell me I am scary and intense, when I lose track and go too fast on too many tangents.
I figure I have two options. I can try to blend. I tone down my speech all the time. I use my Valley Girl heritage to soften my speech (although I NEVER use up-speak, which I can't stand), drop adverbial endings and choose the anglo-saxon cognate. But I can't blend forever, because I can't self-regulate all the time. So the other option is to hang out with people who aren't intimidated because they're my peers. This works really great and I'm happy again, unless I find out that the girl whom I begged to blog with me, who was the valedictorian at her law school, who went to nationals in college and is a stunning writer, who wrote a more popular blog than mine and inspires people everywhere she goes, thinks that she might not do well in some comparison with me. If she thinks that I might be an intimidating person to be compared with on some scale that I'm not even alert to, then she might withdraw like the others did. Then I'd have to start over and find someone even more impressive, who can't be intimidated. Except that there aren't any people more impressive, and I have no hope for a way out of this cycle.
Couple other thoughts: Your willowy beautiful best friend: Heh. My sister is gorgeous. I'm a pretty girl, but my sister is here to show the world what I would look like if the universe had turned my looks up to eleven. And there we are, hanging out together all the time. It's so awesome.
Readers from our old blogs and preferences: I can't imagine that most of our readers won't quickly gain affection for the other of us, but maybe they will still have a preference between us. Whatever. I don't really care if we align differently with people's tastes. But, anyone who expresses a preference like that can bite my rock hard ass won't get a sympathetic hearing from me.