Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
Labels are bullshit. Labels are bullshit because it’s bullshit to think that we can be defined by them. Give me a thousand different labels and it still won’t be enough to truly capture my complex, loving, angry, brilliant, fucked up, bitter, beautiful me-ness. Or your amazing, sad, gorgeous, awful, empathetic, dastardly, shiny me-ness.
Humans use labels as shorthand to neatly sum other humans up. Without having to think too much. And worse – we use them on ourselves, and believe that bullshit.
Today my me-ness brushed up against lots of other me-nesses. Generally, I love a good brush with a fellow human (spiritually, metaphorically, literally). But today there were too many humans. It made me think, feel and behave like an introvert. Like a shy wallflower. I felt stifled, anxious, awkward. And sweaty. God damn I felt sweaty.
Driving home, safe in the sanctuary of my car, air-conditioning my saviour, I started to think about introverts, specifically that I was an introvert – after believing, for most of my life that I was an extrovert. And I thought about how shyly I’d behaved. And how that behaviour might be judged. Why did it matter to me that a bunch of humans I’m unlikely to meet again might think I’m a shy introvert? Why did I think that a bunch of humans might think of me again, at all? It just mattered. And does matter.
The thing is, I’m not an introvert. And I’m not all that shy. Nor am I a fucking extrovert. I’m both, and none, all at the same time, all at once. The person I was today has already gone. She’s about to get in the shower, get in the car and go to another social occasion. An entirely different affair where she’ll brush up against the me-ness of lots of people she knows and loves. She’ll hug, she’ll talk, she’ll listen and she’ll probably dance with brilliant, well timed abandon. People who meet her for the first time will think that her bright clothes perfectly fit her bright personality.
And they will. For tonight at least.
Labels are not only bullshit. Labels are useless.
Photo is from Unsplash.com. Photos are free for anyone to use without attribution, but attribution is appreciated) Photo by Nate Bell on Unsplash