The Eyes of Pity

It started with my cat.

She was a pathetic little thing who would purr at the slightest touch and curl up in your lap if you so much as fed her a scoop of off-brand dry food from the superstore around the corner. My mom got her as a kitten for my thirteenth birthday. I had wanted a dog, but she wanted me to try out the responsibility of a cat as a “transition animal” to prove I could take care of a dog. Ethics of using an animal as a temporary crutch aside, it was ultimately a good decision because we became fast friends. One look into her amber eyes, and I knew she appreciated me. I was worth protecting, because I provided food and shelter. Some affection may have come out of her dependency, but the bulk of our relationship was transactional. It made sense. 

Then I felt it from strangers. I was in the grocery store with my mother, standing on watch with the cart and her purse as she compared prices for bags of frozen vegetables. A tall, thin woman walked by me, and our eyes briefly met. I didn’t know how, but I just knew that she saw herself in me. She pitied me, the awkward tall girl with glasses and bushy hair tied back because she didn’t know what to do with it, with ill-fitting clothes because she had a growth spurt and then needed new bras, shirts, pants, and shoes, with a mother who made her stand by the cart while she compared bags of frozen vegetables’ prices by weight to get the best deal. The woman looked away, embarrassed, though she didn’t know the weight of our interaction beyond the brief awkwardness of catching a stranger’s glance. For me, it was monumental. I was never embarrassed of my mother before then; in fact I looked down upon my friends who complained about their own mothers. I thought they were rude and conceited. But here was my own dear mother, hunched over with her rear sticking out in the isle, leaving me to stand with the cart blocking other shoppers from getting by, with this woman who knew nothing about me standing and pitying me. For an instant I hated my mother; then immediately feeling the hot shame that washed over me, I buried the thought as deep as I could. But that thought would resurface as more strangers passed me through my teen years and pitied me for various reasons: my ill-fitting clothes, my awkward body with parts that simply refused to coordinate their growth patterns, my glasses, my mother snapping at me on stressful shopping days, my younger siblings shouting for my attention, my sharp facial features that gave me a “resting bitch face.” I grew to despise Pity. When I caught a stranger’s eye, and I felt their Pity, I glared back, relishing in the resulting anger or confusion that pushed out the Pity. I avoided feeling Pity’s deprecating eyes in any way I could. I spent my babysitting money on clothes and makeup and stopped going out in public with my family. When those didn’t work, I simply treated strangers with a dose of disdain so strong and unwarranted, not a soul would dare feel Pity for me.

One day, without warning or provocation, a friend called me a bitch. Not using words, but through her eyes. Though we had made eye contact a thousand times before and I had felt nothing, that day I felt her feelings as strong as though she had spat the words in my face. We were sitting across from each other at a long cafeteria table, the kind with the attached benches that were nearly impossible to get in and out of while retaining any semblance of dignity. My dress was too short to crouch or lift my legs in, so I held the hem down awkwardly while I stepped over the bench and sat down. I had seen other girls doing the same thing a thousand times, but it occurred to me in that moment that the girls who dressed like me sat at another table. They carried purses with makeup palettes and compact mirrors and reapplied their makeup as they gossiped about God knows what, while my friends wore jeans and graphic t-shirts and gossiped about “those girls” and how they gossiped. I turned to my best friend. Nothing. I was briefly relieved, although a few days later, I would be able to read her thoughts, too. In her eyes, I had become one of “those girls.” I never sat with them again, and most of their thoughts on my absence was something along the lines of “good riddance.” The new group of girls were pleasantly surprised when I started talking to them, but they too eventually resented me. I had fixed my winged eyeliner as one girl thought I should; I parted my hair to the side like another imagined; I smiled more around boys and laughed freely and disingenuously because they liked me more that way. And one by one, as I became more like how they wanted me, their thoughts shifted from “friendly” and “cute” to “bossy” and “sexy,” and even “bitchy” and “slutty.”

I knew my college results before official decisions came out, because I could tell which interviewers liked me. I got quite a few offers; interviewers were typically hoping I would answer a certain way so they could write good things in their notes, and I gave my responses accordingly. Some were put off by my over-eagerness, mostly cynical types who had been ridiculed by popular girls with my likeness in their own teenage years.

My roommate was one of those cynical types. I knew the second we met, when I saw her dark brown eyes before they rolled upwards in annoyance. She thought I was a cheerleader. And a sorority girl. And a bitch. She thought I would throw parties when she wanted to sleep and have boys over when she just wanted to watch TV. I decided that night: I would never make eye contact with anyone again.

It was a difficult transition, and I could not help but meet my professors’ eyes as I entered each class. This did, however, help me to quickly identify which male professors found me attractive, and subsequently transfer out of their classes. Once I had made the initial eye contact, though, it was over. I stared at peoples’ shoes, or the whiteboard behind the professor. I was not called on once in class, despite my raised hand, as my eyes lingered anywhere but the professor’s searching eyes. Classmates avoided conversation. I gave in to the temptation a few times; people were mostly miffed that I was apparently ignoring them. I spent meals looking exclusively at my food, spent class with my nose buried in my notes, and even adjusted my schedule to avoid popular bathroom times and mirror eye contact with my hall mates as we brushed our teeth.

My family was my only respite. Perhaps we were too close for the power to work. When I moved back home after college, it took some time to get used to looking a person in the eye again. My mother was concerned, thinking I was hiding something, especially when I cried with relief upon meeting her blue eyes and felt nothing but my own grief.

It was Riley who made me break my promise. I was working a mindless office job where the only eye contact I ever needed to make was with the manager, but since neither of us cared much for the other, meeting his gaze was simpler. I spent my days minding my own cubicle, crunching data and watching the clock. But then came the day I made eye contact with Riley over the water cooler, and I knew that he thought I was pretty. It awakened an urge within myself, which I had locked far away because I knew no good would come of it. Men had terrified me throughout my life, for I might feel their desire for my body any time, any day, through a passing glance. But Riley was simply wanted to grab a coffee. After a bit of small talk, we went for a drink.

A year and a half later we had moved in together, and a year after that we were married and living in a little house with my now old and decrepit cat, his significantly younger cat, and a dog. They younger cat took after my older cat in that she regarded me with guarded respect as long as I kept her food bowl filled, although she also seemed to think I was as much an inanimate plaything as a provider of food. The dog, however, might as well have thought that I put the sun in the sky and brought the stars at night. I doted over him, garnering the jealousy of the cats and my new husband, although he would never know how much it meant to me when his eyes locked with mine. I drowned in his eyes, in knowing that I was loved, and exactly what that meant to him.

But one day I searched his gaze for love and admiration, and was met with Pity. He averted his gaze quickly. For days, I wondered what it meant, until we were laying in bed, and when our eyes met, his thoughts wandered to another woman. He never found out how I knew, but he agreed to leave me the house and dog.

Pity came back like a plague, showing in the eyes of everyone I passed in the office. Even my manager’s eyes lingered, showering me with unwelcome Pity from a man who had hardly said “good morning” to me in ten years. I transferred offices, freed by anonymity.

Somewhere around that time, I visited my sister. We were sitting at her kitchen table, chatting about nothing, coffee in out hands, when it happened. I felt a spark as our eyes met, and my blood ran cold. For the first time, I looked in my sister’s eyes and felt her emotions. The little girl I had loved so dearly from childhood, whose feelings now merged with mine, and what I felt was Pity's cold teeth at my heart.

She didn't feel Pity for me because my husband left me for a younger woman. She felt Pity that getting coffee with my sister was the highlight of my month; Pity that my best friend was a dog; Pity that I worked a simple office job and had never done anything more interesting with my life. My own sister looked at me, and saw little more than a version of herself she strived never to be.

I left abruptly, never looking back as my sister cried out what was the matter with me. I returned home, relishing the silence and the lack of human eyes. 

It’s been years since I’ve seen my mother and the rest of my family. I couldn't bear to know their truths. I spend my days in the new office, come home to the various cats and dogs I’ve adopted over the years, and wait for night to fall. As I lay in bed each night, I imagine myself reflected in a loved one’s eye, and pretend I still believe in unconditional love.