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brandywine28I'm one of those people who tends to turn into a real boring bitch as my birthday approaches. I get mopey, depressed, creepily obsessed with my own mortality...y'know, that old biscuit. But, lucky me, any potential snits I might've fallen into this year got cut off at the knees when I came home to a hilarious card AND a wonderfully JC-centric picspam (dedicated to me! Me, me, ME!) yesterday, both courtesy of the marvelous ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zebraljb! She's an absolute gem, that gal.
As for the growing up thing...I'm starting to think I've made peace with it. Cause it's not like there aren't trade-offs, cliched as that may sound. Perspective, for one. And on a more personal note, the slow but steady dwindling of all my crippling social anxieties. Lemme tell ya, those were no walk in the park. Seriously, I have the clearest, suckiest memories of, let's say, walking into a room and almost HYPERVENTILATING with worry, so sure was I that everyone in there was silently critiquing my weight, my hair, my outfit--which they weren't, obviously, because most sane folks' brains simply do not operate that way. (I know that...NOW.) I've never gotten my jollies by walking around, mentally cataloguing the flaws of passersby, so why--for real, why?--would I assume others were doing it to me? Those kinds of fears are borne out of the type of self-centeredness you only ever find in the extremely young and living with them was EXHAUSTING. Nowadays I go weeks at a time without touching any of my far-too-expensive hair straightening devices. I haven't plucked my eyebrows in over a year. I wear short sleeves, despite my considerable arm flab. It is glorious.
Worrying so much about what the world was thinking of me used to put a serious crimp in my style. Take the whole boyband thing, for example. At the apex of Nsync's popularity, when their media saturation was at its highest and you could actually walk into any random drugstore and buy a tube of Justin flavored lip balm (which tasted like what, I'm only now wondering? Mountain Dew and hair gel?) I was a surly teen mall goth with a giant chip on my shoulder. Think Stevie Nicks--only with murder in her heart. Yup. I only listened to "serious" music...like The Cure. :) If anyone had found out I was secretly pining over a bunch of sparkly dance boys who didn't even sing songs about cannibalism or cut themselves or, or ANYTHING (!), I would've shriveled up and died of humiliation. And what was the point, really, of maintaining my grim, black-lipsticked visage so carefully? To impress a bunch of kids who were probably even sadder and more insecure than I was?...Needless to say, I cheated myself out of a lot of fun with that bogus attitude.
It's occurred to me before that if some bizarre time warp allowed Past Me to meet Present Me she'd probably kick my sorry ass from here to Hoboken, sneering all the while. And chances are I'd just smile like a loon and let her, because honestly? I like my older, mellower self. And if it took turning [number redacted] for me to reach that level of self-acceptance, then I think that's a pretty fair exchange. More or less, anyway.
Oh, yeah--another reason I'm not currently riding the Doom Wagon to Despair Town? I just got back from my neighborhood's annual Fall Festival block party thingy and it's really, really hard to brood when you're crammed full of zeppoles.
zebraljb! She's an absolute gem, that gal.As for the growing up thing...I'm starting to think I've made peace with it. Cause it's not like there aren't trade-offs, cliched as that may sound. Perspective, for one. And on a more personal note, the slow but steady dwindling of all my crippling social anxieties. Lemme tell ya, those were no walk in the park. Seriously, I have the clearest, suckiest memories of, let's say, walking into a room and almost HYPERVENTILATING with worry, so sure was I that everyone in there was silently critiquing my weight, my hair, my outfit--which they weren't, obviously, because most sane folks' brains simply do not operate that way. (I know that...NOW.) I've never gotten my jollies by walking around, mentally cataloguing the flaws of passersby, so why--for real, why?--would I assume others were doing it to me? Those kinds of fears are borne out of the type of self-centeredness you only ever find in the extremely young and living with them was EXHAUSTING. Nowadays I go weeks at a time without touching any of my far-too-expensive hair straightening devices. I haven't plucked my eyebrows in over a year. I wear short sleeves, despite my considerable arm flab. It is glorious.
Worrying so much about what the world was thinking of me used to put a serious crimp in my style. Take the whole boyband thing, for example. At the apex of Nsync's popularity, when their media saturation was at its highest and you could actually walk into any random drugstore and buy a tube of Justin flavored lip balm (which tasted like what, I'm only now wondering? Mountain Dew and hair gel?) I was a surly teen mall goth with a giant chip on my shoulder. Think Stevie Nicks--only with murder in her heart. Yup. I only listened to "serious" music...like The Cure. :) If anyone had found out I was secretly pining over a bunch of sparkly dance boys who didn't even sing songs about cannibalism or cut themselves or, or ANYTHING (!), I would've shriveled up and died of humiliation. And what was the point, really, of maintaining my grim, black-lipsticked visage so carefully? To impress a bunch of kids who were probably even sadder and more insecure than I was?...Needless to say, I cheated myself out of a lot of fun with that bogus attitude.
It's occurred to me before that if some bizarre time warp allowed Past Me to meet Present Me she'd probably kick my sorry ass from here to Hoboken, sneering all the while. And chances are I'd just smile like a loon and let her, because honestly? I like my older, mellower self. And if it took turning [number redacted] for me to reach that level of self-acceptance, then I think that's a pretty fair exchange. More or less, anyway.
Oh, yeah--another reason I'm not currently riding the Doom Wagon to Despair Town? I just got back from my neighborhood's annual Fall Festival block party thingy and it's really, really hard to brood when you're crammed full of zeppoles.
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Date: 2012-10-01 04:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-01 08:35 am (UTC)I've long maintained that adolescence is much more fun the second (or third) time around - you can enjoy the ridiculous crushes so much more when you have money and a car and no homework... And there's a lot more self-confidence and self-knowledge that comes with the increasing turnover of birthdays, so that's also good. I'm in my fifties now, and much happier with myself than I was thirty years ago - it's just the aches and pains that are the downside of age!
Also, happy birthday for yesterday!
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Date: 2012-10-01 11:16 pm (UTC)#2. I am so the same way. I still have my moments, but I do enjoy a secret snark at those around me more than anything. I think that's why you and I get along so well...
#3. I had all the lip balms. I don't anymore, but I did. NO judging.