“Life takes you unexpected places, love brings you home.”
Although the accessibility and influence of social media was
not an issue for us of the Gen X/Elder Millennial generation, we do, in fact,
know a little something about growing up with warped views on what was expected
of us as far as looks went. Please see the “heroin chic” and “nothing tastes as
good as skinny feels” aesthetic of the late 90’s and early 2000’s if you need a
point of reference. As someone who fell victim to the Victoria secret of it
all, and was so dedicated that I starved myself for most of my twenties, I know
how you feel. But I have to say, I am continuously shocked (although at this
point I shouldn’t be) at the new ways we come up with to torture ourselves into
fitting the beauty mold. Botox, fillers, lifts and surgery are no longer
reserved for the rich and middle-aged; it’s walking the hallways of the college
I work at. It’s showing up on the faces and bodies of girls and women barely out
of their teen years, whose brains, by scientific definition, are not yet fully
formed. It’s discussed openly, almost as a necessity, much like the diets and
starvation techniques were back in “my day”, although I’m tempted to say, in addition
to. I vacillate between dismay and horror, because as a 43-year-old, I’m very
aware of what happens to the skin and muscles of the human body as middle age creeps
up. I shudder to think what could/will happen to skin and muscle that have been
pumped full of chemicals and dissolvable fat as the years roll on
It makes me sad to see how much things change but don’t. It devastates
me to think about how important I thought these things were when I was their
age. How each generation slowly begins to realize how damaging it all was, just
as the up-and-coming creates new ways to trick themselves into believing they
are not enough.
I feel as though I’ve been lost for a long time now. The past
10 years have been some of the best and worst of my life so far. And for
whatever reason, the fog is starting to lift. And I’ve felt called to start
writing again, in a way that I thought was gone forever. I think I felt like a
part of me was gone, and no matter how badly I wanted, I wasn’t going to be able
to get it back. Like I’ve spent so long trying to get back to this version of
me that doesn’t, can’t, exist anymore. I could not even entertain the
possibility that there might be something better in the works. I’m old, I’m sorry, “wise” (?) enough to
understand that I’m still on shaky ground and need to proceed with care. But as
my thoughts are coming out of my fingers in a way that feels comforting and
familiar after all these years, I’ll say I’m cautiously optimistic.
I’m kinder than I used to be, softer and stronger at the
same time. I feel love in a way I never thought was possible for me. I’ve survived
things that I had no clue were coming, never would have dreamed were possible. I’ve
become things I would never have believed I could, for better and for worse.
My world looks nothing like the way twenty-something Steph
thought it would look. I used to think that was a failure on my part, that I
was letting her down. That I WAS a failure because of…reasons. But now I’m
starting to look back at her in a different way. She had a lot of things that
she did very well. But as I listen to the new twenty-somethings, what they think
is important, how they feel about themselves, and how much they still have to
learn and grow, I look back at that Steph and I smile. I smile and I think, “Girl.
You have. No. Idea. “
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