Archetype or Mulligan?

Last night I saw a tweet and it occurred to me exactly who Demi’s dating.

The irony of it is pretty heavy—someone from GWJ, with the waves and glasses, the comics and cooking, the girl-crushes and barista snobbery. I took a look around out of morbid curiosity and was astounded: partly that Demi freaked out over E’s tweets once upon a time, and felt compelled to blog how he inferred that we’d “been intimate”, when she was posting the same things right on the boards; they probably started dating not long after we did. Partly that he phoned me right up to chew me out after realizing I was dating someone from the site, when apparently he was doing the same thing… supposedly I did it to horn in on his business, and because I’m a heartless bitch (even though he was the one who introduced me on it, and even though I convinced him to write for them even before that, and to man up and quit lurking even before that). Partly that I had already guessed, but never got around to fact-checking myself before I got distracted by something shiny (I heard he was dating someone who looked like me, and his emails/conversations from this spring make a little more sense now).

The thing is, she seems cool. I guess that’s because I think I’m pretty great myself, and she seems a lot like me. I just don’t know what that means. Everyone wants to be a unique snowflake, right? So seeing photos of stenciled squid from my old haunts that I photographed almost eighteen months ago, pictures of her wearing glasses I had in 2001, and collections of beer bottles on what was, once upon a time, my very own kitchen counter in the rental house I found two years ago from the other end of the country, is unnerving. A newish Twitter account. Video from a Devotchka show one of my friends worked on and streamed to me over his phone. Descriptions of familiar-sounding conversations. Complaints about o-dark-thirty work hours.  …I can’t help but feel like someone’s looking for a do-over.

I spend a lot of time writing about archetypes; hell, I read tarot for a living. Is there some kind of nerd-girl class that all this falls under? Of course there’s a general one, with the glasses and the unruly hair and the paleness from living in melancholy climates. The hipster/DIYer/indie thing with art and music and t-shirts and philosophically astute observations. And G-d knows there’s a barista archetype, all emo glasses and smug superiority about waking up at hours of the morning you haven’t even heard of. But how is it possible that someone else is aggregating such similar things, independently, one step behind me? I’ve known a few people who were fundamentally, psychologically, very similar to me and it was neat. But not structurally, like this. It feels very déjà vu. Or like seeing a silent film of myself.

you are not a unique snowflake

I am, dammit. It’s a cornerstone of my identity. And I’m sure that there are plenty of people I know for a fact there are tons of people in Seattle and everywhere else that do things I do, and like things I like, and go places I’ve gone. And that’s great. Community is about shared experiences.

But damned if this isn’t creepy as fuck.