Before you knew what your life was like
Posted on | March 6, 2010 | 6 Comments
Flipping through a book of poems by e.e. cummings I found flower petals by the dozens from a time in my life when love was a dreamy and girlish thing (embodied by the poem, above–one of my favorites.)
I wanted to be loved the way e.e. loved his women in his poems. I understood little, if anything at all about how love endures and changes; how things get messy and slip; how you become soft in the middle, or are caught like plastic bag rustling and rustling in the bare branches of a tree before spring comes to mask it with blossoms and green.
I haven’t seen flowers for months (it’s still winter here, for another month at least.) And I think about the girl I was then; how I I had a crush on everything beautiful; how my life orbited around boys and their attention (specific boys, and also the general boy populous); how I had abundant energy and time, but no certainty or focus.
I wonder if I would have believed me–describing who I am today? I still have a crush on everything beautiful. And my life still orbits around boys–three, specifically; the biggest of whom still brings me flowers. Somethings stay the same.
What were you like then? Before you knew what your life would be like?
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I am Christina Rosalie
Hello. I'm so happy you've stopped by!
I am a multimedia storyteller, digital strategist, idea starter, stalker of wonder, finder of four leaf clovers, MFA graduate student, and mama of boys. My first book,
will be published by SKIRT! Books in September, 2012.
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March 6th, 2010 @ 4:44 am
More free, less things (I’m not messy, but how did I end up with so many things I ‘need’?), more self-conscious, trying to fit in, not sure why the boys didn’t like me, not sure why some girls didn’t want to be my friend, my nose in a book (dozens, hundreds of them), carefree, studying…
I think my younger self would wonder where all my time goes. Commute, work, commute, dinner, relax-wind down, sleep, (x5). Where is my time for reading and painting and working the garden and exercise? I have to get some of that back.
March 6th, 2010 @ 5:04 am
I wrote, wrote, wrote … never fully fleshed out stories, for I was (and am) weak on plot, but character sketches galore, poetry, snippets, aphorisms. I rebelled against my parents’ version of the status quo by eschewing shoes and undergarments, dreaming of self-sufficiency, and protesting uranium mining. I swore I would never work for The Man. I wanted chickens and babies and a cottage by the shore with a big overgrown garden. I still want those things, though my babies are grown now.
March 6th, 2010 @ 1:15 pm
I had more time in my life before. I had more creative energy. I didn’t feel like things happened so fast and I felt like I had years to accomplish what I wanted to. Now? I don’t feel like I have any of those things. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think I have a good life. It’s just indicative of how very much it has changed and how fast time really does fly.
March 6th, 2010 @ 1:47 pm
When I was young I had my life planned. And because I am still with the same boy I was with when I was 16, I followed that plan. However, I imagined my life with many more parties and outings and vacations…leisure. I had no idea how much I would long for quiet time with nothing at all planned. Or, how pajama days would be my favorite thing. I didn’t see myself where I am now, with this new job. And, if you read my last post, you know that I thought I would have it all figured out by now. But, alas, I don’t.
March 6th, 2010 @ 2:09 pm
I found dried petals recently in my copy of Brewer’s. Maybe that demonstrates a fundamental difference between us! But like other posters I would say that younger me was more worried about others’ opinions, more freely creative, more random with free time, far more naive about love and how it works. But I’m happy with me now just as then I was happy with myself.
March 7th, 2010 @ 11:29 am
Unsure. Bold. Wondering. Thinking. Dreaming.