I trace the younger version of my face on the screen. My cheeks are ruddy and my eyes shining. My hair is the shorter, frizzier version that I gravitated towards at that age. I remember that I felt compelled by that girl in summer camp who chopped all her own hair off, but I can’t remember her name. Her hair was incredibly straight and dirty blond and the kind of tangled that was undeniably sexy. She took a pair of safety scissors from the art room and gave herself this shaggy pixie cut. The ends were uneven and a longer lock fell across her makeup free eyes, but it worked. It all just worked.
I knew that I couldn’t pull off the same hairstyle, not since I acquired curls during puberty, but it felt manageable to have something shorter. Short-ish, I suppose. My hair was my native color-rich chestnut brown and my ringlets, though laden with frizzle, were tight and glorious. This was mostly before the time of hair dye and Brazilian blow outs and trips to the salon that cost me several hundreds of dollars. In fact, I distinctly remember going to a hair school, Toni&Guy I think, because if you saw a student, the haircut only cost five dollars or so.
My roommate shared with me that she found my faith in the students a bit unhinged, but I explained that there were supervisors, experienced stylists, milling about, so there was no way to really have a bad haircut. There was absolutely room for disaster, but it was a time in life where I didn’t give much thought to those kinds of risks. It was just hair and I would figure it out.
If I try, I can still recall the smell of the carnation pink wool coat I’m wearing in the photo. The stale fragrance of the Tube and also, sweat, with an overlay of the Angel perfume I had samples of, only. How I saved for ages to buy that coat. How the collar was high and folded over at my slender neck and the sleeves, too long, covered half my hands, which were placed ladylike across my lap. My denim bore large cuffs, and my shoes aren’t visible in the photograph, but I imagine I was wearing the black and white Chucks I favored back then, and also, now.
It’s my smile that’s captivating. It’s so broad, so guileless. I had experienced some heartache by that time, of course, with Rob being the most recent of the cretins, but I was still mostly unaware of how challenging the world can be. How absolutely gutting living in the world can be if you have even a shred of heart.
There is no question that I was as sensitive back then as I am today. That hasn’t changed much over the years. I’ve always found people complicated- their words a patent mismatch to their behavior. But I think that I held onto things for far shorter time periods. I’m not sure if this is because I had a greater tolerance or I hadn’t yet the scar tissue that influences different reactions.
I don’t have much desire to go backwards in the greater scheme of things. I’ve never been someone that waxes poetically about what was and expresses some urgent desire to return to a different period of my life, no matter how uncomplicated. And yet, there’s a yearning that I feel when I peer at my face on the small screen of my iPhone. Not to return, but to recapture. To find again the person I was when I let more things roll off, when I believed most humans to be good, and when I had a future that was mostly uncertain and still, far from terrifying.
Now I fear so much and it’s hard to know how to move away from that place of fear, of hesitation. I am plagued with thoughts of a stable future, of reliable savings, of the kind of stability that we reject as younger people and crave as we age. We just want to know that some things, certain elements, will remain the same over time. Everything else that surrounds us can shift and ebb and flow, but the basic tenements of our life will stay as is, and this feels delicious and intoxicating.
There is something real about being middle aged and wanting to feel untethered for just a moment, but only so long as it doesn’t remain. Things can feel exciting, so long as that excitement doesn’t turn the whole lot on its head. And if it does, that’s fine, provided some other stabilizing force is waiting in the wings.
I spend a lot of time lately with a lump in my throat trying to categorize the feeling as either indigestion or pervasive anxiety. I treat both with some CVS brand gas/indigestion chewables as if there is some placebo affect situation whereas I lean into the gastrointestinal nature of it all and feel good about my treatment plan and this alone has the power to take it away. It doesn’t though, not really, and then, I find myself spending too much time asking ChatGPT the dangers of overdosing on the meds.
Perhaps these are the moments that no one really talks about. I’m not the cheerleader stuck in an unhappy marriage with my highschool sweetheart, desperately wishing to return to my glory days, but I’m floundering in this adulting business and trying to understand how I seemed to master elements in a more definitive way at a younger age than I am now. How did I do it and how can I do that now?
I didn’t though. Not examining and not asking questions and not learning lessons isn’t winning. It just feels that way because though that ignorance came a certain joy, a freedom.
Or, I’m rewriting it all.
Or, I’m looking at this photo of my joyous self and thinking that was me often and always, instead of from time to time.
Maybe I don’t remember at all. Perhaps I, perhaps it, was more complicated than I remember. That’s a possibility of course. But I can’t see that right now. Right now, I press my fingers to the screen as if I could extract the joy through the digital image. As if I could transfer that energy through touch alone.
I can’t though. And still, I bring the screen to my face and press my lips into the screen, wishing that version of me so much goodness. So much love.
May you wait to grow up, I whisper.
I’ll try, I whisper back.
X
L.
