Cognitive Dissonance

            “Have you ever heard of Cognitive Dissonance?” Eric, whose last name is still a mystery to me, sat a short space away from me in a desk chair, and continued staring a hole through my head.

            “...No.”

            “Well, did you ever play a musical instrument?”

            “I used to play the violin.” I crossed my legs and glanced around the room I noticed couldn't possibly be solely his office. There was a pink bunny on the top of the bookshelf.

            “Well, Cognitive Dissonance is when you play a chord... can you even play chords on the violin?”

            “Okay, I took piano when I was little.” After all, he was an adjunct. Thats why I had gotten him so cheap.

            “Good. So when you play a chord thats all wrong, where the notes don't sound good together, that's dissonance.” I nodded.

            “So my brain is out of tune? Like I'm thinking out of sync?”

            “Yes. And there are two things we can do about that.”

            “Oh?” I crossed my arms. Because here would come the part where he'd say I was fixable.

            “You can either play a different chord, or you can make adjustments to the notes you're playing out of sync so that they sound good--”

            “So, okay, its the same shit.”

            “What?”

            I was annoyed because I had just talked about how I hated being given ultimatums. “You're asking me to choose whether my actions are okay, or whether they're evil and I need to stop.”

            “I said make adjustments.”

           

Kassin, Saul. “Cognitive Psychology” Microsoft Encarta, 2008.

“Sometimes people change their attitudes not in response to a persuasive communication, but by convincing themselves, a process of self persuasion. Cognitive dissonance theory says that people often change their attitudes to justify their own actions. According to this theory, people who behave in ways that contradict their own attitudes experience an unpleasant state of internal tension known as cognitive dissonance. To reduce that tension, they adjust their attitudes to be consistent with their behavior.”

 

            It was 4am and I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom. I had just spritzed myself with air freshener to cover up the smell of cigarette smoke and probably booze that I couldn't smell myself, but knew was there. Looking at myself in the mirror, I wondered if I would gain five pounds from drinking and then going to bed. The circles under my eyes meant I would look even worse in the morning, though. Well, later that morning. I paused. Toothpaste foaming out the corners of my mouth, I stared hard at the left side of my neck. Shit. With one hand I pulled down the collar of my t-shirt. Damn it! There were gray/blue bruises all up and down both sides of my neck in symmetrical lines. The left side was particularly dark.

            I wanted to cry.

            Why the hell did I do this shit? For the sake of variety? I didn't even want to stay out this late. Now I would have to wear collars and turtle necks all weekend and possibly during the week. It wasn't even cold enough! And Breckin didn't even care about me. If I had said, I don't want to come over, he would have said fine. Now I've ruined myself and I can't even cover it up. Breckin doesn't even matter. And he wouldn't even care if he knew I was walking around with him crawling up my neck for the next seven days. Join the crowd, Breckin, really. I should really kick his ass, he wasn't even good at it.

            That night I sat at in the living room and cried because I felt like I was coming apart. I was two people. The girl who was supposed to go to church in the morning at 10am, and the girl who would have slept in since she closed down the bar with a couple guy friends. Well.

 

            So... cognitive dissonance? Yeah, thats a big check.

            But what blows my mind is that I always thought I just didn't agree with the values I'd been taught. I thought they were close minded and simple. And that I was going to be different, in fact I was made to be different. Because I refused to be a lemming, and I believed in experience as opposed to blind faith. And I'm still a little confused here, but I really think that all this time I've been telling myself these things and knowing that I don't believe that at all. Because my values still mean more to me than I let on. My values are why I cry at night when Breckin Ley gives me massive hickeys, and why I feel like escaping to the plains where there's no one but me to feel accountable to.

            Its all a huge lie to myself.

            All this I'm-such-a-bad-girl stuff after Lipscomb was really making me unhappy. But I convinced myself it made me happy because of the way I had been behaving. It was all a symptom.  All the self-hatred and the perpetuation of my actions, the part where I go to Breckin's house or to the bar for no good reason, are my reconciling actions. I am perpetuating my “bad” behavior because just like those people in the psychological study who got paid 1$ to lie, I'm not satisfied by my actions that compromise my values, so I'm going to play like they do satisfy me. I'm going to own my behavior and play like these “bad” things make me happy, since my actions aren't in sync with what my “true” self thinks I should have done. And this way I was tricking myself out of being upset when people looked down on me for getting kicked out of Christian school, or for having too much baggage. I'd be the first to prove it to you that I hadn't made mistakes, oh no, I just had different values.

            Contrary to what you believe, Dr... Eric, here is how I will fix me.

            All I have to do is recognize the voice after I come home from Breckin's as the real me, or the true me. I am NOT a “bad girl.” And I'm seeing now that I never really wanted to be, anyway. I fell into it. The Eifel Tower collapsed under my weight and instead of sitting around in the rubble, crying about it, I stepped back a bit and said, “oh yeah, I meant to do that.” And while I kinda liked being different and knocking down buildings so to speak, it was never supposed to be who I was.

 Its not, and I need to start acting like myself.

            Oh, and by the way, two weeks later I uncovered the fact that Breckin is a Repulican, and was therefore never worth my time anyway.

 

Imaginary (Boy)friends

Daniel Spann had short, slightly shaggy brown hair that he parted down the center of his forehead. He had perfectly creamy skin that seemed flawless and a smile that could light up a room. He was lively, and popular. He always had something to say, and he always wore this beat up old Miami Dolphins jacket that was puffy and slightly oversized.

He was by far the best looking kid in Ms. Hodges fourth grade class.

I had the biggest crush on him ever.

But I was awkward. I was so quiet and afraid of embarrassing myself. And I never said more than three words to him. Even that was only so I could ask where third base was during a kickball game, a question which I now find somewhat ironic. I told Katie Howe that I liked him while riding in the back seat of my mother's station wagon after a play date, and was immediately sorry to have let her in on my earth-shattering secret. Short of my kindergarten romance with the little blond boy down the street, Daniel Spann was the first real crush I had ever had.

Before I go any further, you should know that I was a really imaginative kid. Just before fourth grade, my family moved and I switched elementary schools. Shortly after I was enrolled at Granberry instead of Tusculum, my made-up world exploded to include more than my normal cast of imaginary or fantasy characters. And slowly, I ended up replacing my fantasy world of fairies and my being a yet undiscovered savior of the human race and stuffed animal kingdom with the fantasy world of myself being married to Daniel Shaw.

Yes, we were maybe 20 feet away from each other during class everyday, but I made up a whole personality for him. You know, since I really didn't know who he was. He was completely devoted to my every emotion and would be the first one to come if I was upset or hurt or in pain. Without saying a word he was checking on me. Reaching out and touching my leg while looking deep into my eyes and making sure I was all right. We communicated silently, and, of course, no one could see him or know he was there but me. We were a secret to the outside world. Still, he was next to me always. In the back seat of the car I could look over at him and feel his hand tighten around mine.

Naturally, being my husband, he inherited a role as co-ruler of my fantasy world. Everybody knew who we were. Birds, trees and all things natural and imaginary were beautiful and created just for us. At night he slept with his arm around me (before I ever knew what spooning was), and we fell asleep and dreamed the same dreams.

He became the way I talked to myself. Because I was always talking to him. But no one knew. No one saw; it was all very secret make-believe. Except, of course, for the time Jessica Sawyer saw my mouth moving while walking alone around the playground. She accused me publicly of talking to a pine cone, and I hated her for years afterward.

Sometimes I really wish there were a Daniel for me now. Fourteen years later, I have never really forgotten him. And even after I did forget the details, like how he was so good at playing piano, and the time he stood perfectly still as a bee crawled up his neck and everyone else jumped away screaming, I still remember him more as a feeling that I wish I could have back. I guess in a way I've been searching for him in every guy I meet. That smile and those eyes with that caring way about him and the connection to me where he feels exactly what I feel as he sinks himself into me and we are the center of each other's universe, quietly going about life hand in hand.

But it was my life we were going about then. And the smile and the eyes ironically belonged to someone altogether different. Someone I didn't even know, really. It was innocence and naivete to think that a love like that could be real. Because the Daniel I “knew” didn't have a past, didn't have ex-girlfriends or old unforgotten love affairs, or girls they fell for or were shunned over. The Daniel I knew hardly even fell in love. He was just there, loving me every second. And no one can expect to find that in this world. Thats why imaginary friends die off when the real world hits.

My Daniel ceased to exist the minute Jeff Crews publicly humiliated me for liking him in sixth grade, thus beginning my disenchantment with fairy tales. The complexity of adolescent emotions, and the disillusionment of young adulthood blew Daniel out of the water, out of my mind. And I do know he doesn't exist. But it doesn't always stop me from being disappointed when I figure out how unimportant some people find me.

And for me the ideal is still there on a shelf somewhere. And Daniel has become a piece of furniture in my collection of ideals. He's a reason not to give up.

Cyborgs

There is a Special Education teacher at one of the Ombudsman centers who seems sweet, but can't help looking mentally challenged. She sits around staring blankly into space. She may possibly be a cyborg since I have never seen her eat. However, she does imbibe large quantities of coffee. She has eyes that rarely focus on your face even when she's speaking to you. She sits awkwardly with students, staring over their shoulder and repeatedly tucking her hair behind her ear. She says nothing, just pulls up a chair and sits there. Staring blankly in a new direction.

I think if I were the student I would let her know she was invading my personal space. I think the students are cool with me.

I don't know who would be cool with this Special Ed teacher though. Other cyborgs maybe? The terminator? The governor of California? C3PO?

The Eiffel Tower

"I would still love you even if you did the most horrible thing in the world."

She tells me this as she tucks my seven year old self in bed at the old house in Antioch. In my bedroom with the pink walls and the lime green shag carpet. With my writing nook secured on a cardboard box desk between the dresser and the wall, complete with my own peter rabbit story pretty much copied from the little golden book. 

"Even if I knocked down the Eiffel Tower?"

"Even then."

She would love me, but she would still wonder to herself whether or not she was a good mother. She asked that several times when we my brother and I were growing up. 

"Do you think I'm a good mother?"

Somehow I think I always managed to internalize these questions. Deep down I think I believed it was because of the way I was turning out that she thought she was a bad mother. And maybe it was because of these things that I always took it upon myself to try to be good. I went to church every Sunday even when my father didn't and my brother dragged his feet. I took over my mother's spirit of hold-things-together-while-smiling. And when she was away I picked up the house so my dad wouldn't start yelling when he got home. When conversations turned sour, I knew when to shut up or when to redirect the flow. 

When I turned thirteen I can remember sitting on my bed at night, terrified, telling my mother that the next day I wanted to be baptized after church service. I can remember telling myself that now she could know she had raised us right. Now I was a model for Jack and that surely he would follow in my footsteps. Surely my mom would know I was a good kid and that she was a good mom. Surely she wouldn't worry any more. Time passed. I dated a good guy and I went to good Christian college. And I hated it. 

And somewhere in there I broke. The good guy and I split up. I wrecked my car. I wasn't perfect, and I dated lots of guys, but what my mom didn't know wouldn't kill her.

And then one day she did know. And so did everyone else. I had "issues." Never mind my 3.8 GPA and my job as the campus anchor-lady. My grandfather sat on the edge of my bed and cried. I cried. I had failed. And it was strangely like someone had died. Some part of me, real or facade, that I didn't even understand then went missing. I wasn't a good kid anymore. I was the rebel I had always wanted to be, but there was this nasty aftertaste to it that I hadn't anticipated, and the gaping hole of what I couldn't understand I had lost. 

She's never really asked me if she was a good mom since then. Maybe the question always had more to do with my parents' divorce than with me.

But this big thing, this ace in the hole, was more like a thorn in my side, or a snake bite that spread its venom all over and poisoned everything I had tried to make good. I was flawed, and there was no way I could ever go back.

My brother never got baptized like I did. But I'm not entirely sure what that means anyway. There are things that are never really discussed in my family now. And I can't help but wonder if my mother "still loves me" more when she doesn't have to look at the Eiffel Tower I knocked down. As long as she doesn't see it, it didn't happen. And I don't know what I'm supposed to do about that, because sometimes I feel the same way.

Matt Elliston

Matt Elliston is married now. 

But when I knew him at Lipscomb he was a good looking guy with wide brown eyes, black hair and pale white skin. He looked good with a nice five o'clock shadow, and his arms were thick with muscles that I never saw him use. He was slightly mousy looking with an upturned nose, and he had an air about him that suggested he might approach sex the same way a five-year old approached Christmas morning: wide eyes a twinkle and a grin with much excitement and little understanding. Childlike, even innocent. 

And I hated that. The world is not innocent, and I couldn't stand the way his view of romance was so smooth and clean and reliable when I clearly knew it wasn't. Even as he drove me down the backroads of Green Hills trying to explain to me how much fun he would have making love to his wife whoever she ended up being, I couldn't listen to a word of it. He was so full of ideals. All of which I knew weren't true!

It didn't help that Ben Roller's Tau Phi crew looked at Matt's crew like they were space aliens. It didn't help that Michael Metzger smiled at me from his seat on the floor during chapel. It didn't help that all these people looked at me strangely when Matt brought me a rose after chapel on Valentine's Day. 

"Oh. Thank you. How sweet!"

But after I put the rose in my backpack with the bud sticking out, I noticed Michael and his friend Chandler milling around on the bottom bleacher of my section, and I ditched Matt for them. We went down to the side of campus by the road and smoked cigarettes.

Matt never contacted me again except to look sadly over at me during chapel, and once to send me a three page letter in my mail cubby about how much I was selling myself short. His friends wouldn't talk to me either. They gave me looks like I was a leper. Like I had made my choice. But I was having too much fun, and in the end the looks didn't last very long because by the time Michael and I were an item, I had reached the beginning of the end. Of that chapter at least.

CK "fits" in

Anytime someone says something about Dirty Santa gifts or Gift Exchanges or any annonymous gift giving thing, I always think of my sophomore year of high school and how I went to the Brentwood Forensics Christmas party.
David Larder, a senior, kept calling me CK because I was wearing this ridiculously small almost child-sized shirt that had 'Calvin Klein' written across the front. I now look back and interpret this as a nod to the boobs he would have had to eye in order to get that name for me, but oh well.
I hadn't wanted to do the Dirty Santa gag, but somehow was convinced that if I didn't get something I would be weird. So at Target in Antioch earlier that week, I was chided by my mother into buying a tiny photo album. This is because we didn't have lots of money, and a 5$ maximum was put on my budget. Sulking about the album, I picked up some pop rocks in the line on the way out and hoped that my gift would blend well into everybody elses.
These days I look back and wonder why I didn't just pick up a copy of "Everybody Poops" and be done with it.
In any case, my gift ended up being picked next to last when the party finally rolled around, and though I was nervous the entire time gifts were being chosen, I managed not to give away the fact that mine was one of the two remaining gifts.
Dan Patrick picked my gift. He was the same age as me, and had enjoyed a lot of success in debate, earning him the reputation of being a really funny guy who was even a little cute.
Which is all why it hurt so much when Dan openedly groaned.
"Ew, a photo album. Yay." His sarcasm was at a high point.
"Awww." The crowd of Brentwood kids felt genuinely sorry for him, apparently. He rummaged around the bag.
"At least there's some pop rocks." And he opened the candy, and they called the next number.

It really shouldn't have hurt my feelings, but it embarrassed me. I just knew everyone was wondering what lame person had bought a photo album as a Dirty Santa gift. And I couldn't figure Dan out after that. I always saw him as rude. I always remembered the photo album that I was sure he must have thrown away the minute he got home.
And I never fit in with those Brentwood kids.
Standing in the middle of Jenny Martin's parents' three story house in Chenoweth, Calvin Klein shirt straining across the boobs that at least I got noticed for, I felt like I really didn't belong there at all. Why had I even come? I hardly knew these people. I didn't grow up like them in a mini-mansion with comfortably aloof parents. I wasn't going to Yale next year like Jenny was or to UPenn like David was. And its not like the rift was economic, it was totally unidentifiable. Its like the more I tried to fit in, the more I felt insecure.
And you know, it was like that my whole life until after much worse embarrassments, when I came to realize that it was all in my head, and that there wasn't really anything to "fit" into at all.

Action Figure Party

You can ask my mom if you need proof, but the first thing I ever asked for for Christmas was a Ninja Turtle action figure. It was 1990, I was 5, and had just started kindergarten. According to my mother, I wanted my own action figures because the boys wouldn't let me play with them unless I had my own.
And I was very specific about what I wanted! At the time, popular releases like "Disguised Turtles," and "Wacky Action" turtles annoyed me. I wanted a Raphael, and I wanted him plain, just like he was on the show and in the movie. And it wasn't until 91' when I got a "Storage Shell" Raphael that I was completely satisfied, and even then my interest had begun to wane.
Why? might you ask?
All right... confession time.
I wanted to be April. And the long and short of it is that I pretty much wanted to play out some Ninja Turtle romance in my head where April got together with the brooding Raphael and made turtle babies. However, since there was really only one readily available action figure version of April a la 1987 (I think anyway) I kind of gave up on her.

Flash forward a few years or so, and I was an 8 year old who was really into the Batman cartoon series that aired after I came home from school. My grandmother would make tuna fish sandwiches for Jack and I, and we'd sit in our living room's matching salmon colored recliners watching Animaniacs and Batman. Most notably, I was completely entranced by the dynamic between Harley Quinn and the Joker. In particular, there was an episode called Harley and Ivy (1993) in which Harley Quinn was kicked out of the Joker's group somewhat violently. Yet immediately, she remarks how much she misses him already, and sets off to prove her worth.
I have this memory of being completely in love with the episode because in my head it was a love story. I was sure that the Joker called while she was at Poison Ivy's house and begged for her to come back. I recalled that he even came by to swoop her up, to reclaim her! And that the reunion seemed deliciously sweet. Plus, I was genuinely mad at Ivy for interfering in the reunion of the two.
Well. I recently viewed said episode via my brother's XBOX Live and was somewhat let down to find that I actually agreed with Ivy this time around. Harley's middle name really must have been "Welcome" because she WAS a freakin doormat.
SHE was the one who called him in a weak moment. He didn't call her! And the only point at which he indicated even missing her was when his lair, or whatever, had become a mess, the hyenas hadn't been fed, and he didn't have any clean socks! And I suddenly found it ridiculously ironic that I had somehow romanticised the most feminist episode of a Batman cartoon I had ever seen.

Fast forward another 8 years, and I'm sitting in English class this time falling in love with Stanley Kowalski (and Marlon Brando) basically for the same reasons.
Savage guy, who is probably an alcoholic, but who selfishly wins Stella over every time despite Blanche's efforts and in spite (via the film version) of the fact that Stanley may have actually raped Blanche.
And I'm totally not kidding. The whole "Stellllaaaa!" scene really turns me on. I mean, even the neighbor is "protecting" Stella who is actually pregnant with Stanley's (probably gorgeous (mmm, Brando...)) kid, and he calls up that he "wants his girl to come down with him!" and Stella almost compulsively walks down the steps where he crumples face first into her chest.

What can I say, I like the sensational, I guess. And I know you think I'm going to make some parallel about how I've chosen a zillion Stanleys and Jokers and brooding Raphaels or even, though I didn't think of it before, Casey Jones's. But don't get me wrong. I'm pretty damn sure I'd never be attracted to Mitch aka Karl Malden of Streetcar, and the point is I really think that through the last little bits of my continual metamorphosis, I have shape shifted from the dreamy Stella and the doormat Harley and the amorous April-I-created-in-my-head to become the feminist Ivy, and the smart/career-girl April, and yes, perhaps I'm even terrified/guarded Blanche sometimes.

I'm not soft anymore on the outside. I don't run up to what I want baring all and saying here! here! and totally not expecting the falcon kick that follows. As falcon kicks do follow. I don't have as much blind faith in the inherent goodness of humanity anymore. Maybe I lost that faith particularly late, and THATS why I have so many bruises. But is it really so wrong to believe in people? There's nobility to that, isn't there?

Later in the Ninja Turtle comic series there is a whole plot development where April and Casey, married by this point, become distraught that they can't conceive, and soon discover that deadly nano-robots have been injected into April's bloodstream and are threatening her life. I laugh at this now because as much as I wanted to be all cute and domestic with some superhero for a spouse, I don't think I really would have warmed to the nano-robots attacking my brainstem idea even with the conception twist thrown in.
And in all honesty, the brutal lovers and the superhero lives can just stay put behind my television screen. Because whoever I end up finding to fight off the nano-robots in my bloodstream is going to be equally in love with me, and baring his own fleshy undersides, and I will NOT falcon kick him to the chest. I won't even kick him out of my underground lair! There will be no mystery and no secret identity. And no drinking problem. And no disturbing the peace, after I've consented to have your child, by continually screaming my name at the bottom of a fire escape.
Instead it will be admiration, high regard, protection, wonder, blithely sound, and endearingly ardent.
You know, just in case you wondered.
Also. I think turtle babies would probably look ridiculous anyway. The kid would need a mad crazy IEP.