Becoming seen
Part 1 It happened twice in quick succession and it caught me by surprise both times. There was only a desk between us, but a chasm of (literal) ignorance was bridged in that moment, and all it took was a simple pronoun. Each encounter took place in a private office, at my workplace. Both conversations included a personal element that found me recounting a story that included my partner, whom, along the way, I referenced — for the first time with these colleagues — as ‘she’. In the saying of that 3-letter descriptor, I was aware, in the back of my brain, that I might be sharing information new to the receiver — the literal meaning of ignorance, by the way, is ‘lack of knowledge or information’. And, indeed, from the look on their faces — days apart, offices quite separate one from the other — that detail about me was, radically, new to them. What happened in an instant — but plays out in slow motion in my memory — was a look of astonishment, then discomfort at the