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That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay...That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. | Ray Bradbury, October Country
I was going through some old posts yesterday when I cam across what follows. I was struck by how much of this is about things I am still learning. It's funny how information is something we have to circle around again and again. I think of Cheryl Strayed writing, "understand that what you resolve will need to be resolved again. And again."
So I figured I'd post it again. Because there is still meaning in it for me--perhaps that's true for other people, too.
ON GROWING UP
There are things about getting older that no one prepares you for.
Like that first time you look at your face in the mirror and realize you’ve aged. You’ll have had your suspicions for a while--sort of squinting at your reflection in the mirror, wondering at the changes. Disassembling your face and attempting to add up the sum of the parts.
And then one morning you’ll wake, rinse water, look up, and it’ll hit you. I’ve aged. I’m older. And your face will reflect that. And it’s not a bad thing. It’s not an altogether bad thing. It’ll suit you. The age will settle in nicely around the eyes, pop your cheekbones just a bit. But there will be a certain youthfulness that is lost. A sweetness and roundness that is no longer yours to claim. And there will be a sadness to that small loss.
There is a loneliness to adulthood that is sometimes good and sometimes not. A loneliness to knowing that all of the firsts still ahead of you have long since passed for many you love so dearly—the people who came before you and readied the path. Their firsts are now shadows and ghosts and loss lurks in the wings, a persistent threat.
Your breasts may come in late. Like at 22. And you’ll think it has something to do with the added weight of that age. But when the weight is lost and the roundness of those curves remains, make peace with it. It is okay if they look nothing like your mother’s breasts. It’s okay if you do not have your mother’s body. This is not a betrayal. It is not a betrayal of your mother that you do not look like her. The look of a woman is a vast, boundless thing.
You will arrive at an age when what you develop this insatiable need for the conversations that come at the end of the day.
Oh, you’ll want the other stuff too—this kisses and the sex and the Sunday morning coffee runs. But there is a thing so particular about needing a person in which to empty secrets big and small. To tell the really banal stuff. And you’ll go on all these dates, so many dates. Bad dates and terrible dates and lonely dates and good ones too, but at the end of them you’ll just want to go home, crawl into bed, and tell your person just how hard and funny and ridiculous it all was. But they won’t be there. In fact, you’re only going on those dates to get to that person. And the irony of this is a sort of insult to injury. But that person—your person—will be born of these dates, both bad and good.
Or so you are told. And so you keep going.
The cost of some friendships is too high. And you must let them go. You may feel like a bad person because of this. You may feel disliked. And you may think it is because you are not bubbly enough or kind enough or palatable enough. And that may be true. But you know what else may be true? Sometimes you outgrow things. It is as simple and as complicated as that. You do not have to be liked by everyone. Let me say that again: YOU. DO. NOT. HAVE. TO. BE. LIKED. BY. EVERYONE. And you must be courageous enough to accept that. Not everyone grows up. Not everyone takes risks. So not everyone deserves what little time you have.
There will be men who hurt you. And there will be men who make a fool of you. And the second is somehow far worse than the first. Because it is disrespectful and unkind and stitched together by small, selfish lies. These men—the ones that take you for a fool—these are the men more concerned with being seen as the good guy, than actually being the good guy. These are the men who worship at the altar of cool and casual and isn’t-this-fun. The men who lack courage. Who say they are fearless when fear is their motivating factor.
Many of these men are really, really good and worthy people who have yet to figure out just how good and worthy they are. But they’re not there yet. And you don’t need to wait around for them to figure it out.
The great challenge of adulthood (other than figuring out just what the hell it is you are actually doing with your life) is learning to speak honestly and kindly. Finding where those two things live—which, I’m pretty sure, is in that sacred space where courage and self-worth meet.
The pursuit of honesty and kindness is much like standing small and vulnerable in the great, big ocean. Leaning into the waves as they crash over you. You might come up gasping for air, totally water-logged. But hell, if it doesn’t feel good. Scary and overwhelming, but vital. Like there’s more life in there—in that moment of impact. Because to go in pursuit of honesty and kindness takes fearlessness. It demands power and self-awareness and a heaping dose of humility. Honesty and kindness are not easy. They expose vulnerabilities and flaws and force us to admit our wrongdoings. But they are humanizing. Which is the only level on which any of us can ever really meet. Not too high, not too low.
Assertiveness is a hugely misunderstood and undervalued skill. You have to figure it out. That’s part of what growing up is. Read about it and practice it. And hold yourself accountable. Assertiveness is neither passive, nor aggressive (and most certainly isn’t that thing we call passive aggressive, which for the record is still aggressive). Be better.
Because some things don’t age well; anger is a really ugly thing in an adult.
There are certain words that will resonate differently as the years pass. For example, I am a woman possessed by the notion of home. Obsessed with its meaning and variations and color. I want to know what it tastes like and what it feels like and if I can hold it in my hands.
At the age of twenty-six, just months shy of my twenty-seventh birthday I moved to what I now declare is very-nearly-the-most-perfect-neighborhood-that-ever-was-and-ever-will-be. And a little bit of home was revealed to me in the mess and perfection and symphony of these tangled streets.
I travel away from it each day. Because I must. For work and for play and for all the things between. I take the subway to midtown Manhattan, which I hate. And I take the subway to Williamsburg or Park Slope or the West Village, which I love. But at the end of the day, I return home. Always, I return home. To this small pocket of green and brownstone. And my eyes soften and my chest unfurls as I come up and out of the train station onto Second Place. And I think: if the only value of this place is the joy I find in returning home to it, that is enough. Even if I didn’t have to leave, I would, just to experience the pleasure of the return.
I think maybe that notion applies to worth as well. Sometimes self-worth flags. Sometimes it is lost all together. But if the value of that happening is the journey back to it—the journey back to self-worth, which is maybe just the journey back to self...well, that alone is worth it. Therein lies the value. Because it’s a really good, really worthwhile, really satisfying journey back.
Home and its many gradations.
And I go in search of it. Again and again and again. Forged as much by what I find, as the search itself.
One of the best pieces of advice I've ever received is this: do five things, every day, before noon, that you don't want to do.
Often I try to do five things before I even head out the door for work. Sometimes the list looks like little more than this:
1. get out of bed
2. make my bed
3. put the dishes away
4. send one or two quick emails
5. wipe down the bathroom sink
OH, THE GLAMOR!
But I think there is something really powerful about checking off some small, actionable things, right at the start of the day. Small things give way to big things and the feeling tends to snowball. And frankly, there are few things as thrilling as knowing I was super productive with my day (I may need to get out more).
So my question is, what are your five things?
And what advice have you been given that has stuck or proved helpful?
(the comments section is open)
You guys...YOU GUYS...Twenty One Pilots (and Ed Sheeran) are having a major moment in my life right now. I saw neither of these things coming.
Twenty One Pilots is because they do a cover of Can't Help Falling in Love and I am just a sucker for that song and the Ed-Sheeran-thing is because of my mother.
Let Monday commence.
Part I: On Opinions
The thing about being single and not-as-young-as-you-once-were is you start to worry everyone thinks something is wrong with you. And then you start to worry they are right. And of course there is a sneaking, creeping suspicion that perhaps you have a third-eye and no one has told you.
Everyone has an opinion. We live in the AGE-OF-OPINION (caps lock feels appropriate here) when people offer them up freely and without prompt. Occasionally they offer them up even after you’ve expressly requested they please.do.not, thankyouverymuch. Opinions are funny things--quite often flimsy and ill-informed. There is an episode of Frasier where Niles says, I like to know what I think before Maris [his wife] tells me. I think of that line most days. The sentiment resonates.
When you are single and not-so-young-as-you-once-were people are especially keen to offer up ideas. Most of the time they sound something like this: Oh, you should really date someone like so-and-so. Oh you really should keep an open mind. Oh, you should definitely go on a second date with that person you’ve already said you do not like because you never know! I will concede that I can’t imagine or dream up the man I’ll end up with (usually that’s the comment that follows). I do not know who I’ll sit next to on the subway tomorrow or who will walk through the door of a restaurant in two years time; I haven’t a clue. But I do know what I like. And what's difficult about the language above is that it is laced with this: Your gut is not to be trusted. You are not your own best advocate.You do not know yourself. Because of such comments and because of my own fears I have often ignored the better part of myself that says: No. Walk away. Do not do this. I have lost months to bad relationships with crummy men because I didn’t trust what I already knew (and fear, too). Getting over those guys has little to do with the men and everything to do with forgiving myself--which is occasionally a more arduous experience than I care to admit.
For those who worry that something is wrong with me and I would do well to heed outside opinions/advice, fear not! I pay Tom quite a bit of money each month to use his very prestigious degree and first-rate mind to to offer well-informed feedback rooted in the larger context of my life and informed by the knowledge of what I ultimately want. So I like to limit opinion-based-feedback to his office. In case I haven’t said it before (I have, but let me reiterate), I think everyone should have a therapist. Not because anything is wrong with a person, but because we should all have sounding-boards. Because mental health is important and it should be more accessible in this country than guns...I’m getting off topic. I believe in therapy like most people believe in exercise: it’s good for you, it’s preventative, it'll see you into old-age. I began seeing Tom when I was not well and I am very well now; I still see him! In fact, on the odd week when I can escape work to get to him, or fit him in before, I practically skip there. Because talking it out is helpful, and because his opinion is worth quite a lot.
Part II: Flirting
It is generally acknowledged by my girlfriends that I am a tremendously unskilled flirt. But no one could quite tell me what that meant. The notion of flirting-well did not come easily to me. What do you mean? How do you do it? I would ask my girlfriends. Well, they’d begin, you make eye-contact and lightly touch his arm. And I’d sort of growl because yes, I’m not a total dolt, I do know that. Recently a very good friend (who happens to be a guy) was helping me with crafting a message to a different guy and I let him know what I wanted to say, and he looked at me with total confusion and said, No, don’t make that joke. Being self-deprecating at this stage is no good, as though that was the most obvious thing in the world. So I sent an email to Laura and Laura said, No, Meg, you do not talk badly about yourself to this guy. And then I chatted with a girlfriend over dinner the next night and at a certain point I casually said, Did you know that when you flirt with a guy you’re not meant to be self-deprecating? And she looked at me, cocked her head, and shook it up and down with a certain amount of force: Yeah--oh yeah--don’t do that. That’s not flirting. It doesn’t read well when you don’t know the person. Oh. Huh. Hmmm. So I went back to the original source and began piecing out this idea. And in the process I made a comment on the other end of the spectrum (you know, about hey, like, ummm, yeah, I’m a catch) and he looked at me and smiled, and said, You can’t be both. You can’t be super insecure AND super confident. You’re going to have to choose one. And I swear to god if there had been a lightbulb over my head in that moment it would have lit up. And right then and there I made the decision to invest my stock in the latter.
Years ago Tom encouraged me to give up fat talk. At the time I didn’t really understand his reasoning and I was skeptical that it would make any difference at all. But as Tom is almost always right, I thought Yeah, okay, I’ll give it a go. It proved revolutionary. When you eliminate specific language it’s like putting a roadblock in front of well-tread paths in your brain (paths covered in potholes) and saying, not that way, you can’t go down that path. Which means you have to try new paths. And these new paths...they are so good. I mean, holy smokes, they. are. so. good.
Well, this is what I want to say, to “invest in confidence” I gave up self-deprecating language. I just cut it out (fat-talk of another variety). And I can’t begin to tell you what a difference it has made. I honest to goodness feel like superwoman! Because here’s the thing about confidence, it shrinks fear. I have spent so much of my life (SOMUCHOFMYLIFE) making decisions--both conscious and not--driven by fear. Not doing things, doing lesser things, settling for this or that or thisamajig because the fear was crippling and physical. But that attitude is like coming at life from a position of weakness. So in trying confidence on for size, in walking around the city as though I already am, this is what I have found: I am kinder. I am friendlier. I smile more easily. I’m not afraid to start a conversation or call the bartender out on his bullshit or let the cute guy on the street know that his dog has just bitten down hard on something that he probably doesn’t want in his mouth. I am more generous. I am softer. I feel prettier. My actions more accurately align with who I think I am and, quite frankly, who I want to be. I am fighting less internal dissonance. I am humming in new ways. Everything feels less personal. So yah, I sort of feel like I’m on steroids (I once had a really bad cold, which is how I feel comfortable using this metaphor). I’ve been working on a larger writing project that I hope to share in the next few weeks and one of the essays is about how when I was twenty-two and very, very sad there was this sense that I’d forgotten what joy felt like. And as I was working on it, I thought, I know what joy feels like, but I think maybe I’ve forgotten what hope feels like. Which is to say, the thing about confidence...well there are all these unexpected fringe benefits: kindness, yes, but hope, too. It’s like I suddenly I understand what it means to be an enthusiast about life. And yes, flirting is just a little bit easier.
Okay, a lot.
