Why Can’t You See Me?
Please, let me out of the cage of your old perceptions
If you are not like me and do not worship at the altar of the brilliant singer and songwriter Maynard James Keenan (TOOL, A Perfect Circle, Puscifer), you may have no idea what the image above represents. It’s a tattoo I got in London back in 2015, based on a Deviant Art interpretation of the song “Three Libras” from A Perfect Circle. The song has many intepretations but the one closest to what Maynard himself has conveyed is that the three Libras represent seeing someone’s truth at the soul level, through your “third eye”, which you can only do when you truly know how to love.
When I got this tattoo almost 10 years ago it was from the perspective of feeling unseen by those I loved; whether family or friends or lovers. I felt often as if I was screaming into a wind tunnel trying to be understood. Every time I heard the song, which was a lot as a super fan, it hit me:
“Difficult not to feel a little bit
Disappointed and passed over
When I look right through
To see you naked but oblivious
And you don’t see me.”“Three Libras” by A Perfect Circle
Years later in a much different state in my life, I still love the song and still relish the tattoo, though the meaning of it has changed for me — slightly. I wasn’t in a knowing position back then about the third eye nor in the position to be truly able to see anyone else clearly, because my life was muddied with unaddressed trauma and poor learned emotional behaviors and what I now call a “numbing problem” that centered around alcohol. Second, because of everything I just stated, I realize now that I had been seen, for all of my mayhem and chaos, but I wasn’t seeing me.
That has all changed. I know who I am. Two people this week— psychological professionals even — commended me on the emotional regulation and ability to be calm when faced with uncertainty; how I’ve stopped hiding behind my C-PTSD and using my disorganized attachment style as an excuse for treating others a certain way and instead learned how to manage my internal parts to not cause pain or react to others impetuously.
None of this was easily achieved, however. It started with me first kicking my “numbing problem” which I for a while branded as alcoholism — none of us really know if it was the trauma or the ‘ism that caused my drinking but all that matters is I don’t want to numb nor drink anymore. And getting sober and getting into trauma work and getting healthy, regulated, and emotionally safe to be around, as well as spiritually connected and healthy, became the priorities in my life above all else (except, perhaps, my cats).
I wanted to become someone worth seeing.
I also wanted to become someone who could commensurately see who others were and treat them with the love and care that they deserved. This came in levels, but it happened quickly. I could see and love my friends for who they are. Unfortunately, in my first year of sobriety came to close, I found that many couldn’t see me for who I was then; only who I used to be. I was once again screaming into the wind tunnel, but this time with healthy energy.
Why can’t you see me?
In one stark example, I had a friend who I went as far as to call a best friend. The harsh reality is that we never should’ve been friends because our individual insecurities were like kindling to each others’ flames for years. It had been an on-and-off friendship that started when she began a relationship with a now deceased true best friend and he was a good glue for us. But when they split, and her true self started triggering my true self at the same time my true self started triggering her true self. While her ex was still very much alive at the time, he had expelled her from his life, while I was still teeter-tottering trying to balance two friendships. But I was an unhealthy, “numbing,” self-righteous, envious person at the time and at my worst. And she, despite being one of the most stunningly beautiful and stunningly brainy women I’d ever met, was also the most insecure I had ever met. The friendship eventually evaporated.
Years later, after my friend, her ex’s, tragic death, she and I reconnected. In the aftermath of death, everyone is on their best behavior, bonding over their sadness and loss (and, in this case, guilt, due to the method of his death), and so were we. We reconnected. We self-declared best friendship again. I hit a serious rockbottom with my “numbing” problem further, spurred by my loss, and she admittedly took some hits from that. Until I woke up on August 27, 2022, and decided to stop drinking and numbing entirely — which then began all of the painstaking work to also heal what caused my to numb or act angrily or jealous or mean in the first place. I’d become loving and docile. I’d become present.
I was finally someone to be seen.
Most of my friendships thrived. Many I never thought I’d hear from again responded so maturely to my accountability, or amends, for how I treated them when I was drinking. Some, comically, didn’t understand an amends at all and used it as a narcissistic pulpit. For the most part, anyway, it was great, and for the first time in my life I could receive and give love and was doing the thing. I felt more loved than I ever could’ve thought imaginable and it was as simple as me being able to give it equally without drama.
Yes, the friendship that never should’ve been, got worse. We would hit walls over the silliest of things — like my preferences for my own birthday. Or, fights about things that in retrospect never even remotely mattered. Despite time going by, despite me clawing with bloody fingers up a hillside of self-awareness, we were combusting. This time, this time though, I was kindling to her flame. I had no flame for her to ignite anymore, at least not the explosive unhealthy friendship kind.
I tried to address it, working with my therapist who, as all good therapists do, never took a side or declared either of us right or wrong, but helped me examine my own actions and how I might be more compassionate. At first the old me wanted to go careening through the Zoom screen and say, “Wait, I didn’t do anything wrong, why do I need to work on my compassion?” Aye, there’s the rub. When we are healthy, we are always examining how we can be more compassionate. So, I did that.
Many approaches to discuss how I was feeling, to no avail; each time I was met with actual lists of notes of actions she’d catalogued that she was worried were indications that I was the person I used to be. I won’t state the obvious on how unhealthy that was. She never brought up her concerns in the moment; sometimes we’d be together for hours and it would be lighthearted and fun or I’d spend record amounts of times listening to her talk about serious emotional challenges she was having. Then, days later, “At 2:14 p.m. you glanced sideways as I was talking which worried me you weren’t listening and didn’t care and were about to yell because you twitched.” Mild exaggeration for dramatic effect, but it wasn’t that far from the truth. The final straw came after a long talk with a mutual friend in which, we agreed, that I could not continue to grow and be healthy if I was kept mummified in the thoughts of someone else I was actively engaged with. I decided to give it a “sink or swim” last try.
I remember it clearly, fall of 2023, sitting at my then apartment in Manhattan on a call with her, making amends for past behaviors for maybe the fifth time, but also saying that I was also canceling plans we had the next day because I needed time to protect my own emotions from being assuaged as if they were reacting in the same rudimentary behaviors as my old ones. I was met with more lists of things I had not done, but the little Jen phantoms in her brain did. I giggle as I think about it, while a serious situation, I was sitting there hand-painting distressed brown boots into distressed black ones, almost like doing a Zen garden as I heard about these phantoms of who I used to be seeping into her emotional reality yet nowhere near spatial reality. Despite the giggling, it made me really, really sad.
Why the fuck can’t you see me?
In the end, I canceled the plans, and while we talked about regrouping a month later, we haven’t talked in near a year. I chose this. It’s been liberating. I no longer have someone seeing me for who I was in previous years; merely people who see me as I am now. No one constantly making me face down old demons that I had already let go because she couldn’t. Do I still love her? No. Do I still care for her? Of course. Do I want to be friends again? No. Maybe someday, but someone who brings out the worst in you is likely to always bring out the worst in you, and it’s usually best to revere, honor, and kindly remember them as the life lesson they were — and hope you were a life lesson to them, too.
Long yarn spun, its one of many examples I have faced where someone said aloud to me that they accepted me for the new person I am, while either treating me as the person I was or gossiping about me as the person I was — this situation was merely the most extreme. Those people are no longer in my life, either. The thing with healing is that your self-esteem grows several Grinch sizes and you no longer have the tolerance for being treated as lesser than.
But I still just want to be seen.
Here I am expecting
Just a little bit too much from the wounded
but I see, see through it all
See through, see you“Three Libras” by A Perfect Circle
The upside of all of this is, through all of the hard work, friendships that were more healthy for me have continued to blossom, and while I found the hard way I needed to do more work on myself on the romantic love side of being seen and seeing clearly, I was able to get there, too. Not perfectly, not without causing hurt, but because I had done the other foundational interpersonal work I was able to become healthier on that level, too.
I am so glad at least I can see it all now.
