First Impressions…
I want to get to know someone, not based on finding the perfect outfit for a first date, and then canceling because you can’t, but on the person they are every day. I mean when they are old and I am sitting by them in a rocking chair yelling at the kids across the street or the fish in the ocean (depends on where we retire) do you think I give a shit what they wore the first time I met them? (although I will remember because I have a weird memory like that)
But it is more than that superficial part I am talking about. The real first impression, having to do with who you are, who you give off, and how your day has influenced your self at that given time.
The more first dates I go on the more I realize it is impossible to be the same “me” everytime. Sometimes I may be introspective, sometimes goofy, at times I may give off sophistication, and sometimes I just don’t want to tell you about my tattoo again. So for the person on the other end of that night, will that first impression be the “go to” moment of who I am or has social media and the “need” to stalk someone’s past after a date instead of the memory of the night just entertained, made it a moot point.
Will I no longer need to worry about that “changing schools” mentality because so much of me is engrained in an online memoir? Do those first moments slip from mind as the overwhelming amount of social media crams its way into the mind of those around you pushing out the present and consuming them with past?
Or will, as time and dates continue, my true self be a shock. As my personality progresses from one dimension to two dimensional with each encounter, does the person I met adapt or hold onto a memory of that first night when I fit the category of that specific mind set and personality associatively put forth by myself?
Someone said to me I was kinda a “smart dork”, the word smart never really registered as a descriptor I would use for self. People smart or worldy perhaps, but book smart… That would be new. But that night I knew so many random facts, I didn’t need google a damn thing haha. My mind flowed information that might make my LASIK surgery seem like a waste of money since I was being pictures with intellectual glasses on anyway.
So my thought is, does that first impression stick, as the personality we bring back into mind when shit goes wrong or things start to “change”. (Change being a poor choice of words, as it is more like the progression of pulling back the layers of someone impossible to summate in a first encounter) But do we want to live in that “first impression” to hear the songs playing or to feel the butterflies in the stomach?
Does each date, essentially boil down the rudimentary idea of changing schools. In one school you had years for people to “assume who you were”. But you change schools and you can, like a movie, reinvent your self. Eventually you, as a person comes out, but are people so used to a certain “first impression” that even that change will still be crowned with it, masking the quirks, the small bits, the layers. Will we be unable to truly see the person in front of us because our mind has, in some small way, subconsciously, fallen for that “first impression”. Yearning for it to be that simple, that complete, and not having to worry about time revealing more than we are willing to put in effort towards. Instant gratification through perception and projected assessments.
I suppose for me, recently finding love and then having it broken quicker than it was built, I can say over time it is beautiful what more impressions can do, how they can make you find the person more attractive, more exciting, more lovable. I think it is important to just put forward the face you can the day you meet, because then, no matter what, you are being who you can, and each day you continue to tell the truth, to your partner and yourself, allowing for the growth to be organic, beautiful, and comforting. To want that “first moment” back, is like asking for your virginity to be restored. Impossible, to say the least, but so much better the second time, or third, or when you truly understand and embrace a connection.
