Thoughts About: Hitting a Deer
“I’m looking for the unexpected. I’m looking for things I’ve never seen before. But I have trouble with the word ‘shocking’ because I’m not really shocked by anything." - Robert Mapplethorpe
I was driving too fast at night down a hometown road known for its faint lighting and high population of whitetail, when out of the regrowing forest, I hit her.
It’s like I knew it would happen, and my reaction was a sigh of disappointment as opposed to fear or sadness; I pulled over, the deer ran off, my mom’s car was half wrecked yet drivable.
Yet when I called my mom, I acted panicked. I hit a deer. It came out of no where. I feel so bad. I’m so sorry. I’m OK. I think the deer is, too. I feel so bad. I feel so bad.
Except I didn’t feel bad at all, and I was aware that I was pretending, yet I kept up the act because I thought that’s how I should react — or how my mom would expect me to react — in a deer-hit-your-(mom’s)-car situation.
I consider myself an emotional person; just the other morning I sat in grief mourning a lost friend, and I teared up listening to one of my partner’s childhood stories. I feel quickly and deeply and never shy away from what arises.
Which is why this scene replays in my head, a conundrum. Maybe logic outweighs emotion here. Or it’s an early example of my mentality in the work place: There’s a problem? Fix it.
In Joan Didion’s essay Some Women, she writes about Robert Mapplethorpe’s response to critics calling his work “shocking.” He responds, “I’m looking for the unexpected. I’m looking for things I’ve never seen before. But I have trouble with the word ‘shocking’ because I’m not really shocked by anything — I was in a position to take those pictures. I felt an obligation to do them.”
My connection to hitting a deer may be an artistic stretch.
I’ve experienced a lack of emotion in other instances where I felt like the surge should be strong, partly explaining why A Clockwork Orange is my favorite film, or why exploring “taboo” topics interests me (sex! relationships!).
Or maybe it’s because I think so much about what I think about that sometimes I don’t feel the need to think — or react — at all, and that I’m comfortable with my emotional responses… yet want to head others’.