true To Oneself

I’ve heard it said that as we get older we slowly become more and more like our younger selves.  I believe it was Shakespeare who made some mention of a “second childishness” in later years.  In my case, at present, it isn’t so much ‘childishness’ that I’m feeling, as much as ‘teenage-ish-ness,’ and most of the corresponding complications of that time of life.

You see, friends, my immediate family simply doesn’t understand me.  They don’t know why I like to do what I do.  They don’t have any interest in things that I love.  They just barely fall short of making fun of me for doing what I am so passionate about.  They just … they just … they just don’t get me, man!

I keep telling myself to stop talking to them about things that are damn interesting to me, because I know I’ll only get a blank stare from them, once again.  If I talk too loudly or excitedly about something, they’ll say, ‘calm down!’  I hear pop song lyrics about not being understood, and about trying to find their way in life, and about wondering ‘when will my life begin,’ and I can sing all those lyrics with full emotion because I know exactly what they mean and how they feel.

It seems so unfair to me that only teens or twenty-somethings get the chance to feel lost and angry about how restrictive and unfair are the responsibilities of life.  Their poetry and lyrics and speeches are taken seriously as legitimate gripes.  If someone my age talks the same way, I’m pretty sure they’d be laughed at; no way can someone like me know that kind of confusion, or the feeling of never being taken seriously, never getting a chance to express exactly who they are, and be given respect for it.

And, yeah, I would love to be able to wear the amazing clothes I see young pretty things wear.  And if I did, we all know the reaction I’d get.  It’s just not fair.  But, I digress…

When I was an actual teenager myself, my closest friend was a wonderful girl with the wonderful name of Lauren Canario.  She was a young lady like no other.  Absolutely.  I knew that then.  I know that now.  I sometimes wondered (still do) if she was planted by aliens.  Not that she was strange, just wonderfully unique.  She lived her own life, followed her heart and her talents as few do.  But not at all in an outwardly selfish way.  It was just, ‘this is me, hi, happy to be friends, but, this is me, take it or leave it’ and always with a smile and shy giggle.  She didn’t talk a whole lot, and often felt very shy.  I remember being on the phone with her for hours sometimes, just sitting in silence.  We were that close.

Lauren and I lost ‘touch’ with each other, as often happens after high school.  And she moved to the other side of the country, to New Hampshire.  Why?  Because she’s a very active part of the ‘Free State Project’ there.  In fact, if you google her name, you’ll see videos of when she was literally dragged away by police for not leaving the porch of one of the houses that the city was about to tear down.  They were using the often-abused ‘eminent domain’ excuse, not because they needed the property for a road or a school or anything like that.  The houses were being torn down so that the private company Pfizer could build there.  The reason Lauren was ‘dragged’ was because she refused to assist the police in arresting her.  She did not resist arrest.  She simply did not help them in their carrying out of the job.  She simply did not walk.  Unfortunately, the judge in the case did not agree with her Constitutional logic, and she was sent to jail for six months.  But dear Lauren, she came out smiling.

That’s who she is, and was.  I guess to me she has always been the epitome of being true to oneself.  I still remember telling her about a story I was planning to write, that I had started thinking about, and writing notes about, while we were both still in high school.  And years after we graduated, she would literally dare me to do it, to write the story that I had been dreaming about for so long.  I never did, at that time.  But her encouragement to fulfill my dream--doing what I obviously loved to do, writing--will always stay with me.  I guess, perhaps, I should tell her (if I can ever get in touch again), that I used that exact same story, finally, during ScriptFrenzy last April.  (And, no, she’s not on facebook, as far I know.  Which is totally in keeping with who she is.)  I miss her.

For this first blog, I guess I’m straying all over the place.  Perhaps not.  To me, it all seems to be connected.  Actually, this was written in two parts.  Right in the middle, I had put it aside in order to fix a flat tire on my bike that I discovered yesterday.  Because I didn’t want to spend money on a new tube right now, I cannibalized another bike’s tire; doesn’t really matter, I’m the only one riding bike these days, anyway.  And after the fixing, I took the bike on a test ride around the block, and onto the high school field, doing what I love to do:  riding as fast as I can, bouncing along over the grass, with iPod music playing into my earbuds, and me pretending that I’m riding a horse in a very exciting (perhaps romantic) scene in a story.  It’s the sort of thing I’ve done since childhood.  Maybe that’s just it.  Maybe I’ve just never completely grown up.  I’d like to think that’s the case.  I'm pretty sure I have fewer facial wrinkles than most women my age, anyway.  I credit that from never becoming an official, card-carrying adult.

It’s all about being true to oneself, isn’t it?  Rarely an easy thing to do, but made even more difficult when those immediately around you will not lovingly accept it. 

Perhaps the discussion of the solution to that is the subject for the next blog.  ^_^



“People say,
They say that it’s just a phase,
They tell me to act my age,
Well, I am!”
— Song ‘Perfect Day,’ by Hoku