Experience #6 Something Permanent

So if it hasn’t become evident from previous experiences yet, I’ll just outright confess that I’m completely vain. I wear makeup and exercise every day, and I love trying new beauty products with all their fantastic promises. So when I decided to get a tattoo for this next experience, people who really know me thought I’d gone crazy, someone even mentioned a mid-life crisis.

I’ve never done anything to my body to permanently distort it, so why now?

The simple, but of course not so simple, answer is that it’s symbolic. As an English teacher, I love the idea that something can represent so much more than itself. This small, hidden away tattoo has a deeper meaning for me than just the year I’m leaving fear and, apparently for some, sanity behind.

The tattoo is symbolic of a lesson that came with a high price. A lesson in how and why things fail and fall apart. At the beginning of my marriage, I still believed anything was possible; that I could have all the goals in my life realized and not have to make any sacrifices. I went into my marriage believing that I’d found someone who would help me accomplish my goals instead of change them. I remember a conversation with an uncle right before my wedding. He questioned me on getting married so young, reminding me of all the goals I’d set for myself. I told him that it would be okay, that I would still accomplish them. My future husband understood what they meant to me.

Time wore on though and everything began to change. If I wanted this, I’d have to give that up. If I wanted to be happy as a couple, I’d have to give up wanting, wanting anything that would tear me away from the life he pictured for us. But I was guilty, too. I gave in little by little, persuaded by reason that it was what was best. That this was the life I was supposed to want. Reason dominated until the life I led resembled nothing of the life I wanted. Still, my head reasoned with my heart, I had everything someone could want, why was I unhappy? I must be crazy not to be happy with this life. I must ignore my heart telling me that something was wrong.
I continued to give, to give up, to try real hard to fit into the life I’d built with my husband, though I never felt as if I belonged in it. I always felt like an outsider because it wasn’t me. But I was supposed to want it. It’s what everyone else wanted, so I was told.

Then several traumatic events weighed on my heart. It’s funny how when we are feeling our lowest, our head turns to our hearts for the answer and not the other way around. If my life were to be over today, could I have said that I lived it? I think I’d only existed.

My heart told me it was time to be selfish. I needed to stop giving with nothing in return. I drew the proverbial line in the sand, and decided I was going to take some of myself back. I wanted to be happy, and it meant going back to the person I once was. My marriage ended when I wouldn’t allow things to remain still, unchanging. I needed something different, and I needed to be able to find it, but I’d given in for too long, and the life we’d created was too comfortable to chance finding a new way. I wasn’t worth the sacrifice of what we had built.

Looking back, I realize that it was all brought about because I should have never let go of my dreams from the beginning. I shouldn’t have given in. I should have taken the risk at the beginning of losing him and following my heart instead of years later. But even back then, I knew that he wouldn’t have followed me as I followed him. If I would have loved myself more, I would have admitted it then instead of years later.

I do try to learn from my mistakes, and this is one I hope to never repeat. But I still find myself giving more than I receive. Not asking for anything in return, afraid to ask for what I should deserve. Afraid that I will lose someone I love if I don’t give instead of take what I need.

So I had a reminder tattooed to me. A heart with wings to remind myself that the path to freedom and happiness is a journey through my heart. I’ve learned that lesson the hard way, and I don’t plan to ever forget it.

Experience #5 Too Much Information

So after the initial excitement of my psychic reading last month, anxiety set in. The psychic had told me what my life would be like in six months and even two years from now. But how I would get to all those great things from the point where I’m at right now? I have absolutely no idea, hence the anxiety. Therefore, I decided to move an item higher up on my list of experiences that I had planned to do later in the year.
I went have my tarot cards read. Having read my own tarot cards for years, I figured that I could have someone else do it and answer all those looming questions.

It sounded like a good idea at the time. Right, not exactly how it happened.

Just like I did when I chose my psychic, I did some research before I went to New Orleans. I didn’t want to end up behind the St. Louis Cathedral with some random person, so I discovered the Bottom of the Cup Tea Room, which appeared to have a reputation. There were several reviews of the shop, and it appeared legit.

When I made it to the front of the clouded windows and barred door and it was closed, I thought oh no, I’ll have to find somewhere else. A sign on the door said to go one block to St. Ann’s and look for the palm sign. So I walked the one block… and ended up behind the St. Louis Cathedral.

I nearly walked right pass Gina as I studied her palm sign. Did I really want to have a street psychic read my cards?

It was as if she sensed my doubt because in a moment of hesitation as I debated walking on, she made eye contact and motioned me over.

The street psychics were out in full force for the benefit of the Mardi Gras tourists, and she’d taken up her post with all the others to appeal to the masses. I still would have preferred the quieter shop.

She was running a special that day, so she threw in a palm reading and a crystal reading along with the tarot card reading I’d gone looking for.

She then proceeded to cure this obsession I have with knowing my future. I no longer wish to know. I’m over it.

Whereas I enjoyed the experience with psychic number one and felt some excitement, this one presented information that made me think and sometimes stutter aloud, no, that’s not possible. That will not happen. I would never let that happen.

Since many of the things the two psychics said were contradictory, I shall see which one is correct, for they both can’t be accurate. I know which one I’d cheer for at this point, but only time will tell. My tarot card reading caused more than a tad of anxiety and one moment of terrifying panic. It was enough to make me not want to revisit.

I will finally do what I should have done in the first place. I’m going to imagine what I want my future to be, and then each day I’m going to ask myself what would make me happy today and bring me closer to that image. Though the great predictions give me hope that what I’m trying to accomplish right now is possible, I still believe that we each make our own way. Good and bad things happen, and it’s how we choose to react in each situation that determines where we end up in the future. I’ll make my own choices and see if either of their predictions are correct., but it will be I who decides what I want.

Will her Prince Come?

My daughter recently paused in her twirling around the living room in her pink princess satin night gown to ask me if she could grow up to be a princess. At first I told her no, but since I always try to give factually accurate information to my children (Some conversations have gone astray this way. I should have learned my lesson with the where babies come from conversation), I added that the only way for her to be a princess was if she married a prince.

“So Princes are real?”

“We don’t have any in our country, but they do have princes in other countries.”

“So fairy tales are real?” I was straightening up toys, but the excitement in her voice made me look up and forget a moment that I’d asked them to pick the Wii games up earlier.

She laughed her loud laugh, her face glowing. “I’m going to marry a prince. I want to be a princess when I grow up.”

Ugh. Not quite what I was trying to get across. Had I not taught her that girls can do anything? We don’t need someone to arrive on a white horse and gallop off into the horizon to rescue us from our lives. I never had dreams of being a princess as a child, and I read Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. I wanted to live in an apartment in New York City with a career that made me famous. (I know, I know, but I was a kid). Of course, I also dreamed of being unmarried without children, and I’m divorced with two children. I guess no part of that dream really came true. I don’t think I’d completely thought out that dream.

But her dream is cultivated by the Disney princess machine. Disney makes $4 billion dollars a year on merchandise to sell my daughter the idea that any girl can be a princess. She wears princess night gowns and clothes, watches princess movies and listens to princess movies. She has princess books, dolls and dress up clothes. She’s bombarded by the idea that a prince will come and rescue her and love her forever.

In the culture we live in, probably not the lesson to be teaching. Unless Disney starts bombarding boys with how to treat girls like princesses, I don’t think she’ll find prince charming when she grows up. I teach teenage boys today, and they don't impress me much with their ability to sweep a girl off her feet or even know how to ask a girl out without text messaging it. Love takes more work than the happily ever after of a princess story, and I’ve already taught her that it’s okay to give up. (No, I don’t think that’s what I did, but it’s how it’s interpreted by many).

So how do you tell a five year old that she probably won’t find a prince one day that will make her a princess?

Sigh. You don’t. You nod your head, knowing that she will discover that on her own before you’d like. I changed my dream from when I was a child, but I remember what it was like for everyone to tell me my dreams were unrealistic and I needed a reality check. Who knows what could happen if I just tell her that anything is possible as long as she isn't afraid to make it happen?

And besides, next week it will be a different dream that I will nod my head for. She’s only five and I’m sure tomorrow’s dream may be something more worrying. She does have an imagination like her mother, after all.

Experience #4 Does Hair color Make the Person?

For experience number four, I decided to get a makeover. I’m sure if you are following this blog, you may be getting the impression that the experiences on my list are superficial. I promise there are many other pursuits that will come in the year that don’t involve outer beauty improvement.

When I added a makeover to my list of thirty-three experiences, I didn’t have this fantasy of transforming myself into someone I wasn’t. I’ve spent my entire life as a blonde, except for the last two years.

After the school shooting nearly two years ago, I wanted to disappear, go unnoticed. I didn’t want people staring at me as I wondered what they thought. Did they think I was brave, or that I had done something to be the chosen target? Did they think I could have done something differently to prevent the student from dying? I didn’t want anyone to look at me anymore. I didn’t want to imagine the questions that formed behind those stares. I’d always been aware that my long blonde hair garnered attention, so I chopped it off and dyed it deep brown. The hard, impersonal color attracted me as it matched the numb hardness on my insides. I would not allow the anger, the shock, and the unhappiness to break me, and as each new person praised my strength, I grew harder on the inside and deepened the color of my hair.

Numbness eases little by little as time passes though. Slowly, I dealt with all the emotions that this random event created, so the idea of returning to my natural honey blonde has been toying in my thoughts for some time.

So when I considered what I wanted to accomplish next on this list of experiences, returning to the old me was high on that list. So I did the whole makeover this weekend and left the last of the lingering fears behind.

But when I look in the mirror, it feels as if there is a wig where my hair once was. I don’t quite feel like that blonde I was two years ago. Maybe I never will. Because though I’ve dealt with the emotions of that day, I will never be that same person again. I’m not the same blonde that went to work that morning believing that nothing bad can happen.

So as I stared into the mirror, I started thinking about how important hair color is to a person’s identity. Many would argue that it’s just superficial. But when we describe someone to people, we say, “Oh, you know, that girl with the brown hair and green eyes.” We start with that simple identification.

Not too long ago, I was washing my daughter’s hair as I dyed my own. She studied the deep blackness of my hair as the dye worked, and I scrubbed her golden brown hair that defies a color category. “What color is your real hair, Mommy?”

“Oh, it’s the color of yours, just with more blonde.”

She stared at my dye-soaked hair a moment longer before returning her attention back to her bath pouf.

I wanted to tell her that her hair was beautiful, but the words caught in my throat. My hair is her color, and I’ve dyed it long enough for her to not know that our hair colors are nearly identical. How can she believe her hair color is beautiful, if I don’t show her?

Hair color may only be an extension of our superficial selves, but it is one I’ve always identified with who I was as a person. I may not be that blonde anymore, but when my daughter looks at me and sees her hair color and other parts of herself in me, I want her to know that those parts are special and that she doesn’t need to change anything about herself for her to be beautiful and unique. I can at least be strong enough for her.