Maureen Who?

I love this picture. I would like to use it, as if I had something to prove. Allow me to explain.

Three weeks ago at the Islamic art section of the Met, I ran into my high school friend Seema who I have not seen for one or two years, however long ago our five-year Amity Class reunion was. We had a pleasant enough conversation, talking our about our final year as medical students, our impending subinternships, (and the additiveness of friendster).

Call me crazy. But after than encounter I was filled with disappointment over the fact that she recognized me so easily. Ever since I graduated, changed my hair, my clothes, lost weight, plucked my eyebrows, I had this Romy and Michelle-esque fantasy that 10 years from being that frumpy geeky senior I used to hate, that no one would recognize me. That someone from my old school (preferably someone I used to crush on) will turn their head as I walk by, not realizing that they had once shunned me. (Admittedly I was disappointed when, during my high school reunion, my crush-of choice, Joe, greeted me by name.)

But let me lay it out like this. Mine wasn't the story of the typical nerd being picked on, made fun of, and hated. Mine was the story of non-existence. I could not join clubs, having to watch my sister after school. I did not have many friends. I spent lunch periods volunteering to clean the rat cages for our Biology teacher, because so often my friends would not be at our designated lunch table (and how horrible it would be if Joe or Chris or Fouad or any of the others caught me alone with one or two other estranged souls.) My club of choice? Math team. This was my claim to fame. Glamorous.

I never believed the being smart or successful necessitated, or is facilitated by, being a non-entity in high school. In fact, the girls who were ahead of me in class rank, the people who got into schools I could not get into, were popular, sat at lunch tables with hoards of people, all while having talents far exceeding my own. I hated them. Not because they were better, but because they were better AND popular. They showed me that my unhappy social status was not a sign of my introverted genious, but rather an intrinsic weakness I cannot overcome.

To some extent I have not outgrown this. In most social circumstances I still feel overwhelmingly inadequate. But now, after years of trying to change myself, inwardly and outwardly, I realize I cannot. And perhaps the reason that I cannot is that most of my attempt at change is focused on the outward. Because this is easy. You can buy the nice clothes, makeup, and run off the pounds. You can learn to make the mirror and the camera love you. But something else needs to happen. (and I don't know what it is.) Until then, when you are standing around in a chic lounge with people you barely know and are trying to impress, you will still be that math team geek that cleans up rat feces during lunch period.

So this as good as it gets. I am not as unhappy as I was. Having passed high school, college, and most of medical school, I am farther away from the societies that, by their emphasis on fraternizing, force me to face my own insecurities.