Colorful Journey

I am constantly taken off guard by the amount of time and energy people invest in making others feel like they don’t physically measure up. I just can’t seem to get used to the comments made in casual conversation which appear to have no forethought.

My mother-in-law makes comments about my physical appearance most every time we are together. Knowing her personality, she isn’t doing this to be cruel or to make me feel badly about myself. I really think she believes she is mothering me, as my own mother hasn’t been in my life for several years.

“You know you are going to have to cut your hair at some point.”

“Why?”

“Because it bothers me.”

“I don’t know why it should bother you.”

“You just do these things to spite me: the long hair, the leather jacket, refusing to wear makeup. Do you know how beautiful you would be if you wore makeup?”

I know she would do anything for me, as she sees me as her own child. I think she knows that I am strong enough to take what she says without getting my feelings hurt or doubting her love, yet I still wish for a day when she will look at me and tell me she sees a beautiful person.

My few friends have grown to accept me as I am, even if they do not understand me. I think what bothers my mother-in-law and the majority of the general populace  is that they cannot accept me if they do not understand me, and the only way to understand me is to recognize themselves in me.That is why I write what I do. Although not everyone can relate to the situations, I believe the same emotional undercurrent runs through all of us.

I have a girlfriend who lives several hundred miles away. We sometimes speak on the phone in the afternoon and during those brief moments, I feel completely accepted as I am. She doesn’t need to see me to know me.

After those conversations, I’m left wondering if my mother-in-law is correct. Must I change what I look like in order for people around me to see me, or is it worthwhile to continue to seek out people who are as blind as I when it comes to friendship?

Even though I doubt myself at times, I understand that at thirty-three, I’ve spent over two-thirds of my life trying to please other people. My goal is to shrink that fraction as I age instead of allowing it to grow.

Being an insecure attractive woman, I lived as though my looks were what was important. My appearance made it easier for people to approach me. People like to be around attractive people. Gaining too much weight, losing too much weight, stretch marks on my belly after pregnancy…these were all concerns that left me depressed and wrapped in feelings of worthlessness. Being without my looks meant I had to depend on my personality to attract others, and I never felt like I had a personality others wanted to know.

After the second baby was born, I spent many many nights walking him up and down the road in the stroller, just trying to find peace for the two of us. For the first time in years, I could think without clutter. No television or conversations between others; just the baby and I walking down the road. It was on one of those walks that I remembered a childhood dream in which I was an old lady living in the woods, long white hair like my father’s, herbs hanging from the ceiling, critters running in and out the door. Sometimes I became a heroine or an ear to listen or a healer to those who passed by, and other times I spent alone with my books and plants. It was my way of escaping from a home where I was not accepted or understood.

I had that dream again last night, brought on by the sudden growth of white hairs I see every time I pass by the mirror and recent feelings of being unaccepted. But in this dream, I was not alone. Hanging herbs brushed across the heads of friends as they gathered in my kitchen. Books were opened and read and discussed. My husband drew drinks from his still. My children ran through the woods, ducking under wild limbs. And I stood in the middle of them all, white hair tickling my waist, barefoot, a smile on my face.

I thought the older I became the less I would question life and relationships. I thought friendship meant understanding. I thought wisdom was answers. I thought life settled and relationships were quilts pieced together and passed on.

But now I see that wisdom is the desire to question life, and the acceptance of the personal growth in our friends as much as in ourselves.

I might be white-headed next year or five years from now or maybe will only carry a few sprouts my entire life, but I’m determined to live as that woman in my dream, surrounded by friends and family and hobbies and nature, barefoot and sure of herself, living wisdom.