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Tuesday, March 28, 2006
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How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?
~Satchel Paige
I think this was the first photo ever taken of me where it was plainly, visually obvious how old I was. It freaked me out a little; I had no idea that years of sunshine and wind and making dumb faces and worrying would catch up with me so soon. I've always felt really goofy and young and semi-ageless in my own way. I believe that working with kids and teenagers for years will do that to you (if it doesn't do just the opposite!)
On one hand, you have to be mature, and know how to handle rough situations when they come up in the lives around you. And I do.
On the other hand, you have to know how to get down onto the floor and really play.
That has always come easily.
But, as a result, I've probably erred on the side of immature too often, from the screwy finances to the flip flops to the quirky jokes to the crushes to the shyness to my natural, semi-annoying eagerness to please and fear of disapproval.
Sometimes I really wonder what the heck I'm thinking when I do and say certain things, but it's usually because I'm feeling insecure -- or "embracing my offbeat-ness."
In other words, being a proud dork.
Time marches on, though, regardless of my maturity level. Regardless of whether I've acquired the acoutrements of my contemporaries -- the spouse, the house, the car, the nest egg, the grown-up concerns and commitments.
The wrinkles appear no matter how much I channel a 22 year-old.
Other things appear, too.
Like truth. Like changes. Like pain.
Like long-buried realities that refuse to stay buried.
And more wrinkles as a result.
I've spent a good portion of today squinting into my future and bracing myself. I'm out of my comfort zone; I don't have anyone else's problems to hoist in front of my own. Even if I did, they wouldn't go away. I have to deal with this one before it's too late. And no one in my life is asking me to do anything else. They're all pointing me in the same direction.
I hate it.
I hate inevitable. I hate concrete. I hate that all there is left to do with some aspects of my life is just... deal.
Don't you see me, Life? I'm still young, I swear it. I can't possibly have lost or gained anything that I cannot get back or give away. Not yet.
I don't even look my age, dammit!
Except for in the one photo.
Oh... and in my heart, which -- right now -- says I am much, much older.
9:20:09 PM 
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© Copyright
2006
Meg Fowler.
Last update:
4/1/06; 12:14:43 PM. |
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