Ellie's blog: "Ellie"

It always astonishes me how quickly people will assume they know what you’re all about. Instantaneously. Within one moment of entering a room: a slightly obvious assessment is made based on appearance, walk, hellos, and then the inevitable conclusion is reached. Check all that apply: superficial, dumb, intimidating, unapproachable, self-absorbed. Call it stereotyping, stigmas, first impressions, whatever. I call it bullshit. Complete bullshit.


We assess only in terms of extremes. It takes less energy to categorize one another into neat little boxes than deal with contradictions. We are either attractive or smart. Simple or complicated. Virgins or whores. Never both. We see in black and white and can never open our minds one quarter of an inch to imagine a rainbow of ambiguity.

Like how the "funny guy", the loud easy-going boisterious one making jokes in slapstick fashion is actually very sad. Like how that “beautiful girl” dressed in an outfit that shouts innuendos across the room is the most insecure. Like the tattooed "punk kid" who volunteers at a kids’ home. Like the "ditzy blonde" that reads poetry on a Friday night. Don't you get it? Our projections of ourselves are much more how we want to be percieved versus how we actually are. That is why is takes so long to break down the front. Still waters run deep and that on the surface is never what exists beneath. The sad thing is ~ no one is ever willing to try.



So tie me up with a pretty ribbon
and toss me out the nearest window if
you prefer the dainty side of this life
that never came with instructions
or a disclosure: caution! you are about
to enter some beautiful contradiction
of what you want and what you get
and what you know and good things
that come in small (slightly dented)
but tied up with a pretty ribbon
packages