you don't know me

online discourse and interaction in a social venue are indeed a funny thing.  too much is often left to our imagination and we haven’t the advantage of all our senses.  information is simply lost or unavailable.  we get a small window in which to peek through and window dressings may alter what we see.  but no matter how we may pimp our profiles and gloss up our pictures eventually our truest selves peek through.  it is inevitable.   we cannot hide the core of WHO we are. 


so it was mystifying to me today to receive an email from a friend i had known online for some time.  this came after i posted a picture of myself smarting off and full of “i don’t give damn” as i prepared for my workday.  the email stated simply “wow...not at all what I thought you looked like...lovely you are...but it would seem I have had you confused with someone else this whole time...”   now i was truly confused by this and it gave me pause to consider…”does what i look like really have any bearing on WHO I am?”  


so in my still smartass frame of mind i immediately text several pictures of myself and stated bluntly, “these are the faces of me.”  within seconds two texts arrive in reply.  both pictures…headshots of a bearded be-speckled young man bearing as haute an attitude as i had exhibited.  he was a little scary actually.  confusion quickly melded into shock and horror.  the email interaction and the pictures taken together i read into as, “i also am not what you thought i looked like.”   


“was there a reason a woman was sending me a man’s photograph?” i wondered.   i asked the meaning but got no immediate response.  worrisome did not cover the actual panic I began to feel.  yes i have heard the online horror stories about stalkers posers and ne'er-do-wells lying in wait of some easy victim.  i am not saying it doesn’t happen.  i would like to think that i am smarter than that.  but here am i so stunned by this possibility that i felt the acrid sting of bile rise in my throat.  “have i been duped by a man posing as a woman?”


apparently not as i found out a bit later.  it seems in the case of the photos i was the victim only of a smartass assistant who found the phone unattended on his boss’s desk buzzing furiously for attention at the texts i had just sent.  i have to assume that it was only youth that possessed him to pick it up photograph himself and mail it through cyberspace to a complete stranger.  still…who does that?   the point is not what my friend emailed or what feelings the prankish assistant tilled up.  those were simply primers for thought.


i began to wonder what is it exactly i show others online?  at best i show snippets of my everyday and perhaps not so ordinary life.  i post pictures of what i see in my world and comments about silly or amusing or serious things i encounter.  and i write.  it is in my writing that you will find me most raw and vulnerable and exposed.  and i consider this to be the truest view at ME.     


it occurs to me though that in our daily face to face interactions we do the same thing.  it is a practical impossibility for someone to see all aspects of our very complex selves all in one splash of time.  nor do we show all of our faces to everyone.   some we hold in reserve for those closest to us.  it is neither hiding our essence nor being dishonest.  who i am online is not fractured bits but instead is very much the faces of me…the whole me only taken in the snap of that moment.