Where are they now?

This is one of my all time favorite photographs of me and my friend Carrie. We were on upper Haight Street, no doubt standing around smoking cigarettes and practicing our "don't give a shit" faces, when a man with an old Polaroid camera approached us and asked if he could snap a couple of pictures. Dude, whatever. We're too full of existential angst to stop you. But, um, could you give one to me?

My camera battery is dead so I can't take any more pictures with it until I get Philip to buy me a new one. I know I'm a liberated woman perfectly capable of buying my own camera batteries, thank you very much, but why should I if my husband can do it for me while I opine on my fainting couch? In the mean time I am scanning a lot of old photos of myself. I know it seems really vain of me. Especially since I'm not posting all the ones where I look haggard and bloated after giving birth to Max. Those tell a story too. (But not one you really want to hear.) So maybe I am a little vain. If you read the last post, you probably got that I don't miss my youth.

I was a very serious person when I was sixteen, as I was in the picture above. I was so very very old inside. Sure, my back was in it's golden age of strength, my skin was dewy and pale like Angel's Trumpet flowers in moonlight shades, and my teeth were a lot whiter. But I was so tired of life already. I wrote furiously day and night trying to purge what I was grappling with in my heart and my head. I was in the middle of a nervous breakdown, a long protracted break down which lasted for half of my sixteenth year.


I have heard some idiots people talk about their teens and early twenties like it was a time full of magic and fairy dust, fresh love and innocent discovery. I honestly never believe anyone who says they wish they could be sixteen again. Or twenty. What's so great about it? I secretly believe that anyone who truly wants to go back in time is deluding themselves into remembering their earlier life not as they lived it, but as they wish they'd lived it. Mostly I think people look back only because they're too afraid to look forward.


The only thing I miss about being younger is being physically stronger and better looking. But aging doesn't actually worry me. It only worries me that I'll miss my chance to age gracefully by spending the rest of my life helping myself get weaker and fatter in clothes from J.C. Penny's. I should be dressing up for my late thirties. I should be wearing red lipstick, pencil skirts, and crisp white shirts with men's ties every day like a modern day Slim from "To Have And Have Not". Or at least whenever I feel like it. I should be projecting the hopefulness I feel for my future; for what lies ahead. I should be putting my best face into the future, not craning it back into the past wishing for what never was.


These old pictures are inspiring me a little. I miss dressing up. I miss having fun getting dressed. Seeing life as a big string of opportunities to dress for the part. Just about the only fun I had as a teen was the incredible freedom I felt to wear whatever I wanted to, whatever reflected how I felt. My world may have been crumbling around me but I still had control over my clothes.

The older I've gotten the better my life has become. It's really strange to me to that when I looked my best and felt the best about my physical self I was at an all time low mentally and emotionally. Now I am more mentally and emotionally healthy than I've ever been in my life, and I have never felt more broken and ugly physically. Irony is constantly kicking my butt.


But here's the deal: I believe that if we're unhappy about something it's our personal responsibility to make changes. No one else can do it for us. No one else is responsible for making our life good or bad. For making us hide or shine. So I have to ask myself what the hell I'm going to do about changing how I feel?

No change really happens overnight. Not if it's going to be meaningful. But change must happen. I am not going to spend the rest of my life wasting time feeling like crap physically. What a ridiculous waste of energy when I have never been more ready to do cool things and meet interesting people. (This is a pep talk in case you didn't already realize that.) (I give them to myself frequently.)

Here's where I promise to make the world a better place. This is the part where I put my hand on my chest and in the background we hear either Pomp and Circumstance or the National Anthem playing quietly and proudly. (I'm not sure which.)

So I've promised myself that I'm going to do my level best to spend the next three years strengthening my back, slimming my body, eating a little less cheese, drinking a little less beer so that I can step into my forties the way I wanted to spend my thirties; strong and confident. I've already got my mental and emotional health routine working as well as it can. Now it's time to get the rest of my act together so that I can see what it feels like to have the whole damn package.


Incidentally, I managed to cross seven things off of my "get healthy" check-list again yesterday. Though I didn't get to bed by ten and I did drink a lot of beer. I also slept much more soundly. Oh well, today is a new day.

(I really think I might have a career as a motivational speaker. Except for the fact that public speaking makes me pass out and drool uncontrollably.)

There's so much more to say. So many more pictures to share. But I don't get to spend all day writing. More's the pity. (For me, not for you.)