life has no pictures of dorian grey

originally published on medium

The more hits Dorian Grey took to his soul, the more wretched became his likeness, hanging on the wall in a pretty frame.

So the famous book, The Picture of Dorian Grey, goes.

The main character Dorian sells his soul to the devil. Pretty as his face is, he wants to keep it, and in exchange, a painting of himself can suffice as the actual reflection of his real time age.

So the man becomes immortal and untouched in the external, even as his actions and circumstances erode the internal. That painting rots and rots, telling the dual part of the story even as Dorian retains perceived perfection. His soul’s deterioration, although horrifying, is fittingly accurate about the duality of his being. And that’s one thing he can rejoice in.

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But when grief hits me in real life, as I lose something so psychically precious to me, there are no pictures of Dorian Grey to show the truth.

When I cannot convey what I’m going through for fear of further exhaustion, there is no picture to point to that could convey it all.

It could be anything. A breakup. A firing. A death. Anything to pain me enough to yearn for respite —

But now I notice that when I feel like a zombie, when I am about to rot, when I need respite the most, I crave the truth to be shown for the record. The truth of how I feel.

And that is when I see there is nothing to show for it externally.

Part of it is that I am a high-functioning human being and I’ve adapted to having my walls up. Even at in a moment where I am being humiliated, still I wear a poker face of casual enthusiasm to the enemy, whether that be a crude boss or the Reaper himself. Even at my lowest, I have the immortal, marble thick skin that is hard to read by the rest of the world, even as I feel my human self writhing and screaming that everything has changed.

I can’t muster even a slight change in countenance otherwise. And sometimes, it’d be easier if I could. Or if I had a picture like Dorian Grey.

When I was traumatized earlier this week by a sudden upending of my daily routine for a year, I happened to open my Instagram app hours after the initial incident. I stared at it, for my profile showed the same Asian-American girl with dyed blonde hair, a subtle smirk, and a witty caption that had been on the Internet even before the incident.

But now, the incident had passed, and although everything had been shaken up in my inner world, there was no outer world traces to justify my pain. Nothing except my subjective perception swimming in my head.

I almost expected there to have appeared a new installment. A trace that I was not now who I was a few hours ago. Instagram needs to depict who you are, right? And right then and there, who I am was: a person that was desperately devastated by having their security ripped away.

And a person who wanted everyone to know, damn it, without being the one to tell them. Leave my front door open and hear me sobbing, goddamn it, for I am sick of being able to pretend like it’s okay, but being so good at that that I don’t know otherwise now.

In real life, I don’t have the privilege to be a complete open book. There are no pictures of Dorian Grey to memorialize my insides, unless I chose for there to be.

I fucking wish, for all the pain I’m going through right now, that I just had a damn picture so I wouldn’t have to explain and think about it.

The picture, damn if it’s real or fake, can also remind me that I was once untouched, and I can be again.

In the book, Dorian chooses life at the end. I am trying to choose that too.

I want to stop pretending but don’t know how, and until I know how, maybe I’ll consider inundating my Instagram with more… literal candids.