by: Trish Cantillon

“You and your daughter look like sisters!” I said sincerely as I scrolled through my friend Katelyn’s photos. “You look great!” Katelyn, in her early forties, then copped to the fact that she had used the photo app ULike to achieve the youthful look, then insisted I download it. I did. She took a couple selfies of us with baby doll rosy cheeks and soft lighting. She then educated me on all the options for altering the face: chin, forehead and nose. And that’s in addition to the make-up and hair color filters. Seeing the dozens of photos Katelyn had taken it was clear to me that I could spend a lot of time and energy perfecting a photo of myself to portray a version of myself that doesn’t exist in real life. Of course, we all, to some extent, curate the images we want to present of ourselves to the world. Some do it via their social media platforms. I, however, have relied on a sophisticated thought process and some magical thinking that gives a false sense of control over how I am seen by others.

Lori was the receptionist at the production company where I worked in the mid-80s after college. We became fast friends and happy hour buddies. She was a few years older than I am and possessed the enviable skill of getting guys to buy us drinks. Most of our nights out started at the Italian restaurant next door to our office.  I had developed a crush on Brian, the new bartender. He finally got the hint and we exchanged numbers, but when he hadn’t called after a week, I was frustrated and disappointed. “I don’t know what to do,” I whined at Lori while we sipped champagne in her studio apartment.

“Why don’t you call him?” she suggested, matter-of-factly, “Tell him we’re going to the Hard Rock and he should meet us there.”

“Really?” I was hopeful but cautious.

“It’s not a big deal,” she assured me as she took a sip of champagne. I really liked Brian, and was pretty sure he liked me too, not in just a gratuitous bar-meeting kind of way. I thought about what I would say. I wanted to be cool and flirty, not desperate or needy. I polished off my champagne and poured some more. The more I wrote and rewrote the script in my head, the worse I felt until I had what I believed was an inspired idea. Lori was putting the finishing touches on her outfit when I piped up.

“You’re right. It’s no big deal, but I’m so nervous. Can you call and just pretend you’re me?” Both she and I were short, blonde girls from Southern California, how different could we sound on the phone?

“What?” Lori said, “Why? That doesn’t even make sense.” She was legitimately confused, and I did not have a legitimate explanation.

“I know it’s crazy but I’m telling you I can’t call him. Just, please do it. Please. I don’t know why I can’t, but I can’t.”

“Seems kinda dumb, but okay,” she shrugged her shoulders and went to the phone.  I wrote his number down and stood next to her as she made the call.

“Just make sure if you get his machine you leave my number,” I said.

“Hi, Brian?  It’s Trish,” Lori rolled her eyes at me, “Lori and I going to Hard Rock tonight – you should come.”  It was quiet for a minute or so and then Lori flashed me the thumbs up.  She had successfully delivered the confident, playful version of myself that I could not.

I was twenty-five when I moved in with my boyfriend Quinton. Up to that point I had done my best to keep my body image issues and self-consciousness at bay in our relationship but living together raised the stakes. I was okay with being naked in bed, in the dark, where my stomach was flat while lying down. But I quietly worked out a routine so that he wouldn’t see me naked or watch me get dressed in the bright light of day. First thing in the morning, as soon as he got up to make the coffee, I would grab my bra, underwear and whatever clothes I was going to wear and toss them on the bed. Since I knew Quinton took his time in the kitchen, and I was deft at changing quickly, the whole operation took no more than a few minutes. One morning, however, just as I pulled my pajama top over my head and tossed it on the floor, I heard Quinton coming down the hall toward our room. I froze for a moment then bent down and picked up the pajamas. I held them in front of me, so they covered my stomach. I hoped that my staging looked casual, as if I’d just taken the pajamas off, but the look on Quinton’s face told me otherwise.

“What?” I asked.

“You crack me up,” he said, smiling.  “You think I don’t know what your stomach looks like?” I had believed that I had carefully managed the view he had of my body.

“I think I know what I want you to think my stomach looks like,” I said, without irony.

“I see all of you. All the time. And I love you,” he gave me a kiss. They were nice words and I knew they were true for him, but I felt unsettled by the fact that he was seeing me, all of me, apparently, through a lens I had not constructed.

And then, when I was not being hyper-vigilant about how I would be regarded in the world, the whole enterprise turned on its head. Writing the Personal Essay was the first formal writing class I’d taken since college.  And the first non-fiction writing I’d done outside my diary. To give us a jumping off point for future essays, the sharp-witted instructor gave us ten minutes to write about anything we wanted. No prompt, just a free-write to see what developed.  Without much thought, I jotted down broad strokes of a personal story. It wasn’t anything that had been burning inside me to tell, it just appeared, and I let it out. When the timer went off, he asked who wanted to share. Many hands shot up, including mine. I had shared my fiction writing in workshops over the years and I liked reading my work aloud. I was excited to introduce myself in this way to my fellow writers.

The instructor signaled for me to begin. “I was twelve when had electrodes strapped to my arm to administer for shock as part of the Schick weight loss program my parents signed me up for.” I could see the words I was reading on the paper I’d torn from my notebook. I could hear myself reading them. But all I could feel was the swell of heat moving up my body and the shaking that had taken hold of my hands. This wasn’t some dark, closely held secret I’d finally set free. This story was just another part of a long, complicated diet resume that stretched from childhood to young adulthood. It bore no more significance to me than The Beverly Hills Diet or The Scarsdale Diet, so my physical reaction to recounting it puzzled me.  When I finished reading a flutter of “whoa’s” and “Oh my God’s” rose from the class.  I thought I was telling a story about what it was like to be a fat twelve-year-old in ten minutes or less, completely comfortable with my identity in that story as the one with the problem. What I revealed was a pitiful episode foisted upon a young girl by her well-meaning parents and her willingness to accept it as a normal response to her being overweight.  I had been eager to share what I’d written; to share what I felt were my talents as a writer but wound up exposing the pain beneath a seemingly benign personal anecdote. Mining my personal history and sharing it with complete strangers through my writing allowed me to see how so much attention was paid to how I looked and how that was inextricably linked to my self-worth.  Although I had spent years in therapy and Twelve Step programs; successfully working through personal issues, writing and being creative in this way provided an opportunity for me to go further.  When writing, time slows down and I am able to experience events from my life with a new perspective and to see myself differently.

The Ulike app invites me to “Save your favorite edits that define your gorgeous features so you will never have to retouch again!”  With their custom filters I can look like “a trendsetter, indie, artsy or retro.”  While this can be an entertaining endeavor, it’s clear to me that whether I am trying to manipulate how I am seen by giving myself rosy cheeks and a narrow chin, sucking in my stomach or letting someone else say they are me, I cannot really keep people from seeing who I am.

Photo by: Designecologist

Trish Cantillon is a married mother of two who has published on The Fix, Refinery 29’s “Take Back the Beach,” Storgy, Brain Child Magazine Blog, and in Gold Man Review and Berkeley Fiction Review. She works for Dream Foundation, the first and only national organization serving terminally ill adults, and their families by providing end of life dreams.