Oh those fancy truffles. They fascinate me, whenever I walk by them, locked in a glass box displayed on rice grains or some kind of hay, for fine appreciative gourmet palates. If they weren't labeled properly, they could easily pass for a pile of poop that can cost up to $2,000 per pound..
I strangely had too many occurrences of people seeing me as poop when I was in fact...a person? :P
For a very short period of time ( not short enough for me, in retrospect), back in college, I was "seeing" this guy who simply refused to acknowledge who I was. ( "Who are you???" I can hear you ask that after reading this. Well, definitely NOT JUST what he thought I was. lol). He could not get pass my ethnicity because he sort of had an Asian girl fetish. I'm not saying that it was all he was into, but he seemed to have a bucket list of things and people to conquer before he died and "Asian girl" must have been on that list. It did not matter what I liked and was passionate about. He would treat me the way he thought and expected all stereotypical Asian girls should think and behave. He didn't even see a tiny bit of my personality, which amazes me since I'm not the quiet and shy kind of person. I made our platonic back and forth last longer than it should just out of curiosity and boredom, I presume. At that age, I was so hungry about learning and discovering myself, and despite the fact that I knew it was clearly going to end absolutely nowhere decent, I still hung out with him to try to understand what was going on in his head. It was obviously a waste of time since in the end, all he was was a complete delusional manipulator. He treated me like poop while I had more layers to me ( clothing AND in the multi-dimension meta sort of speech). I could have been explored at a higher level of curiosity, like those fancy truffles. But it was easier for him to just believe I was easy poop for him to check off his list. I'm not saying I'm fancy like those truffles, but I have definitely more than meets the eye. All this guy cared about what my squinty "not so squinty" eyes. Thankfully I didn't give him any satisfaction so unless he scored an Asian girl after me, that little box on his list is still unchecked. *DEEP SIGH*.
Another example was back when I was working at my parent's convenience store. Our customers just assumed that my family was probably struggling, stranded in long retail hours. They made so many assumptions ( let me specify that it was a very rough neighborhood). They assumed we weren't educated or were poor (we weren't rich, but definitely not poor). They assumed that I would spend my entire life stuck in that store and would take over later on and never go to College. They clearly did not know my family history and why we were doing what we were doing, which we had no interest in sharing with them anyways. The few who discovered we lived in a nice family single home in the suburbs, while both my brother and I attended private schools since our early ages seemed in ultimate shock. It's also funny how many assume that immigrants move to America by choice to pursue the American Dream. My family were living the Asian dream before it all went to hell...They were forced to flee their country and start back from square one and rebuild themselves.
All of these situations above, I could see why that dude and our customers would treat me and family that way, based on sad stereotypes. But my last example is what shockes me the most.
I had this friend who lived near our house and I thought we were getting pretty close. Her self-confidence has always been the lowest but I never thought she wanted to become my friend thinking I was like her. (I am not judging people with low self-esteem, just acknowledging how it could become a problem, but I believe being a very confident person overall). I hear "misery loves company" but that is accurate if misery accurately identified another misery. In our case, I think she has mistaken me with a another potential sad person who could relate to her. I did care about her though a lot, back then, and really wished her confidence level would boost up. She was a good friend for most times, despite strange things she would say and do at times. But here is what happened last year, when it all went down:
Last year, I got very ill. And my husband just found out the very same week that his company was laying of hundreds of employees and his departement would be affected. They gave him four months to seek elsewhere for a new job, after working there for eleven years. I went and sought comfort in my friend and shared with her all my worries and mentioned dramatically how I didn't want to become homeless. We only had one income, and I was expecting another baby on the way. A good friend would have said "Don't talk silly. Hubby will find a job since his resume is so rock solid" or "You guys will be fine" out of comfort or encouragement. Instead this is what she responded to me "Oh Davine, I would still come visit you if you were homeless" Oh, how generous of you, I thought. < insert sarcasm here>. She said and did plenty of other strange things, but I am not going to detail it all on this single post...
And then, our lives turned around miraculously and my health problems became quickly part of the past. My dear hubby landed on his feet and found a new and even more stimulating job, as we discovered he was underpaid this entire time. So it was a blessing in disguise and we built a new house and moved into a lovely new neighborhood. I have not heard from this friend since. A little bit in the beginning, when we just moved. She made flaky plans that always fell through. But now, she is gone completely. I'm not sure if this case was a poop vs truffle situation, but she clearly couldn't handle going from the person who would come visit me, without a home, to the one realizing we were ok finally and are actually at our happiest now. I could almost feel her being bitter about it, when I thought she would be happy for us, as a real friend should.
I will not complain about being perceived as poop though. Better than the other way around where people could think I'm truffle but finally decide I'm poop....
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