Through Your Eyes
possession vs. love, social media and the rise and my experience with and fear of being perceived
There’s an old episode of The Twilight Zone called “Eye of the Beholder”. As a play on the common phrase “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, the episode reverses our perception of beauty by casting us into a society where distorted, pig-like faces are considered beautiful and our idea of the conventionally attractive are actually considered outsiders—pariahs of society.
I was in my middle school English class when I saw this episode for the first time. It was the first one I ever watched, and it haunted me. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I thought about it for days after, and even as time passed, it never faded from my memory. My mind still wanders back to it every now and then.
It was, of course, quite life changing for me at 12-years-old to watch a show like The Twilight Zone. A show that tackled themes such as our perception of beauty, classism, war, etc. in such an eccentric but powerful way. However, it stuck with me more so because of it how it made me feel rather than what it was actually saying.
The entirety of the episode takes place in a hospital with the main character’s face bandaged up after a having gone through a procedure to make herself “beautiful”. The viewer is left to imagine what she looks/looked like before and after the surgery, as well as the doctors and nurses, until the very end when all their faces are revealed. At this point, the role reversal is so shocking that the audience is suspended in disbelief as the woman goes running out of the room and away from what, in our minds, look like monsters.
I remember my heart twisting as I watched her run down the hallway, silently begging her in my own mind to keep running. I couldn’t tear my eyes away as she made her escape, only to find herself back in the arms of the doctor. But this time, another man was there. A man who looked like her, who held out his hand and promised her love and belonging. And yet, I couldn’t let go of that heart-wrenching, gut-twisting feeling that something was wrong. I wanted her to grab a scalpel, something to defend herself, and get away. My gut screamed for her to run. But she didn’t. She went with him.
That feeling to run has followed me ever since.
run run run
I was on FaceTime with my long-distance friend a few weeks ago, talking about everything from books to jobs to planning my trip out to see her, when the topic of social media came up. “I wonder how other people see me,” I said and paused as I glanced back down at her screen, checking to make sure it wasn’t frozen again. “I mean, I rarely ever post, and when I do it’s always of a new city or drinks. I wonder if people think I’m some traveling party girl.”
She laughed and then said, “Oh my god, you’re right. I wonder if people think the same about me.” We both got a kick out of this and then continued to come up with alternate versions of ourselves. These other people that live only in the perceived reality of another’s mind, if only for a brief moment. As the topic flowed into something else, the truth of what we were laughing at sunk in. It’s so easy to do this with social media now. To create alternate truths and never actually know someone.
***
My ex-boyfriend and I reconnected over Instagram. We met in high school, but when he moved away, we lost touch. It wasn’t until years later that we got back into contact and started dating. We dated long-distance for 4 years. But that initial introduction, or re-introduction I guess, was over Instagram. We talked and talked via DMs, and slowly, I relinquished parts of myself. I opened up, and as a result, I gained a partner. Someone who loved and cared for me, but who I sometimes think never really knew me. He simply took pieces of me and created another version.
My ex was tall—at least compared to me. He wore round, thin rimmed glasses and had sensitive eyes. He couldn’t stand to be out in the sun without his sunglasses and, often, I could see myself in them. This short, dainty little thing that couldn’t even look at him without tilting her head back. The version of myself that he saw.
It was unnerving. Like a part of me had been captured, but she wasn’t quite right. Sometimes I looked for her in his eyes too, but she was just barely there. Merely a fragment. It made my heart twist down into my gut like a corkscrew twisting into me. I told myself it was butterflies, ignoring the parts of myself that screamed to run.
run run run
I’ve seen this girl in the eyes of strangers. Felt her in the lines fed to me by men and the guys in high school who slid their arms around me uninvited. Often, they like the idea of me more than who I actually am. They’re content with their perception of this girl—her mangled, diminished presence—rather than the full-bodied truth of her.
Social media exacerbates this. One can easily fall in love with a well-curated profile. The strategically planned outfits and cool, adventurous destinations. Our aesthetic. Whether we do it knowingly or not, we’re often creating a perception of ourselves online. This other version that someone can grasp in the palm of their hand, delighting in our witty captions and mysteriously, infrequent posting. It’s much the same as meeting new people and making judgements about who they are based on how they present themselves. The only difference is that, with social media, we never have to speak to them.
However, even when we do, our friendships and relationships are shaped by it. Instead of starting with a relatively clean slate, we already have an idea of this person in our mind. We’re always holding them to this imaginary standard—a romanticized version they’ll never live up to. We ignore who they truly are and push this crafted version onto them because we want that person. We want to possess them—add them to our collection to look at and tell others.
In this social media run age, the desire to possess has become rampant. We’ve converted people into tangible objects by making them easily accessible at our fingertips. It’s made it easy to confuse this for love, to think that this attraction is more because, well, we sort of know them, don’t we? People know that I recently went on a trip to Chicago. That I’ve been traveling around for the past year. That I love poetry and art and Miley Cyrus and have an orange cat named Pickles. We can know so much, but that doesn’t mean it’s enough to see them. To move past who we want them to be.
It makes me uncomfortable and angry. I can physically see these versions of myself within the dark pools of their eyes. I’ve said once before that I tend to dig my heels in when confronted by the expectation of something I should do. Someone I should be. My instinct is to do the opposite or simply refuse. It’s a toxic mix concocted by my fear of being perceived and my distaste at being told who I am. I still don’t know if it’s good or bad to be this independently motivated. To want so badly to be your own person, you’d tear your own flesh to be free.
run run run
This month marks three years that I’ve been single. Sometimes I think I want that connection with another person again, but mostly, I love being single. I love knowing that I don’t have anyone else’s wants or needs to think about, and maybe that’s selfish—not maybe, it is—but that delightful hum of nothing but my own thoughts, knowing that I am wholly my own and no one else’s, is a high I can’t seem to come down from. This is by no means something to be proud of. If anything, I’ve always seen this as one of my many failings.
There are a few people in my life who I feel actually see me. When I look into their eyes, I see a shinier version of myself, but it’s not diminished or warped because even through their hopeful gaze, I am whole. I am everything I am and everything I could be. I don’t want promises or an extended hand. I want to be seen, splattered soul and all.
As Zach Bryan says: I don’t want love, lover. I want the truth.
For more on the concept of possession vs love, check out
’s article “on autonomous women and the men who ‘love’ them, then lose their minds when they can’t pin them behind glass like butterflies”. It’s one of my absolute favorite reads by her, but her entire page is worth checking out.❣️I would love to know…❣️
Have you ever seen that episode of The Twilight Zone? Or have you ever watched the show at all? What did you think?
Have you listened to Zach Bryan? I’ve never really been into country, but his lyrics have stolen my heart. He’s my fav right now
What’s your experience with perception? Is it something you’ve ever thought about?
With all of my romantic interests, I’ve always stalked their Instagrams before speaking to them or going on a date. It felt better to “get to know them” by myself and then make a decision on them, rather than doing it more organically. Sometimes there’s positives to this (safety being the main one) but ultimately I think it’s a negative, because all we have to go off of in this scenario is our perception of them. On the flip side, when I am talking to a romantic interest and we exchange Instagram profiles, I always get excited to imagine them stalking me and wonder how they perceive me, especially because sometimes I feel like I do a better job of presenting myself online than I do in real life.
I loved this!