No Longer a Stranger

A 2012 update on "The Stranger in the Photo is Me." This is how I feel now, as opposed to 3 years ago. :)

Today, I stumbled across an old photo of my old, long-since-buried dog. Realizing how much I miss my Moose (my speedbump of a goofy black lab), I wondered just what else was pushed to the back of my left hand desk drawer- the one I always forget to organize.

But not today, for today is my 19th birthday, and I need something to keep me occupied until my juvenile need to feast on pizza, cake, and ice cream until I develop a terrible stomach ache takes over. Besides, it's too early to be eating that much junk food, so with a coffee and a banana in front of me, I continue to root around in the drawer.
Suddenly, amongst the forgotten Post-it notes and the stress ball and even my heavily-abused yo-yo, my hand lands on a small, hardcover book. I think I remember what it is, so I pull it out and take a look. It is exactly as I remember it- an old journal I used more as a sketch pad in my early days of graphic design than anything else. It's got the earth on it, and some stars, and is decked out nicely in shades of blue, purple, and silver. I know what's inside it- terrible drawings of old Lisa Frank characters and people I encountered on the streets, mostly in pen, and several attempts were made at each because of that fact. And yet, there is something else that catches my eye. I see a sliver of of a Christmas-y red border poking out at me from inside its pages. I fear I know what this, too, happens to be, but I can't stop myself from plucking it out and looking at it just the same.

It's an old photo, as far as the modern definition of "old" goes, being about 5 or 6 years old. It was a Christmas photo taken at my mother's old work, and the photo's occupants include my younger sister (when she was still a blond- how strange!), my mother, my father, and...

Who is that, anyway?

It's certainly not the grown woman who's looking at the photo from the point of view of a passerby, and yet there's something familiar in the curly auburn hair and the sad blue eyes.

Those blue eyes are no longer sad, however.

The girl- so young, and yet trying to be such an adult to bear the burden of a broken home that only looks as though it's well-strung together- is dressed all in black, with heavy black eyeliner, obscured by thick round glasses that are all-too-soon remembered with a cringe. She's wearing a Victorian lace choker, lace gloves, a heavy skirt, combat boots...

The most striking thing is that she does not smile. Not even a little.

This was the girl who never cried as a baby? This was the child of huge grins, even coming out of surgery at the age of 8? Subconsciously, I tug on a lock of my own hair, noticing that it's still the same length as it was in the photo, just styled differently.
What caused so dramatic a flip? And to cause it twice in 19 years? Too many things, too many incidents to describe in one tiny monologue. Suffice it to say that there were a lot of problems that little girl encountered growing up, and very few were in her control.
But she let them get out of hand. She grew angry- oh, yes, the world definitely owed her something for all that abuse and neglect and suffering. She became bitter, and felt justified in her bitterness, and was stuck in a seemingly endless teenage cycle of depression, ambition, sadness, and rage.

And then suddenly, it all stopped. Dissipated into nothingness, completely evanescent, as though it had never even been there to begin with. That little girl dressed all in black, trying so hard to stand out that she was just another face in the crowd, who hated anything even remotely girly, thought she was supposed to have been born in the 1800s or the 1960s, who pined after love that would always stand unrequited because she just needed another reason to hate herself- that little girl suddenly grew up, in the blink of an eye. Literally overnight. One day, she woke up, and was disgusted with herself. She stopped dressing like she belonged to a label, and started dressing like herself. She stopped wearing her hair over her eyes, and learned to accent, not cover them in makeup. She traded in the combat boots for boots with heels (Alright, so they're not gone, per say...she still wears them), traded the sailor's mouth for polite debate and intelligent conversation, expanded her musical horizons from only metal to all types of music, and most importantly, traded the bad attitude and terrible personality for one that was far more personable and far more becoming.

That little girl came into her own not long ago, becoming a full fledged woman. She learned that ignorance is not bliss for those who are enlightened and standing on the outside, looking in. Naivety is never the answer. Instead, facing her problems and pushing past them was found to be a much more suitable reaction to her troubles. She smiles all the time, now. She feels pretty and desirable, even though she's single and might stay that way for a long time. She's so ambitious, she's running several major projects at once, besides writing, owning a business, trying to get a supplementary job, and attempting to cross the pond for college. She's secure in the fact that she prefers older men who are clean cut gentlemen, instead of being ashamed of that fact and hiding behind scummy, ditzy teenage boys. She has an unsullied, impossible-to-stop drive to help as many other people in the world as she can. Her friendships are back on track. Her grudge against those who gave her grief in the past has faded. She'll never forget, but she can forgive and protect herself against further damage by being the bigger person. She can be a role model for her little sister. She can do anything she wants, be anything, go anywhere, and all because she's allowing herself to be herself, for the first time since childhood. She's let go.

That little girl sits there and smiles over the photograph in her hand, dressed up nice for her 19th birthday, but somehow feeling older. She's not quite like the others- more reserved, far more apt to stay in and read a book or write an essay than to go out, get drunk, and do something else she'll regret. The things that interest her are usually beyond the scope of her generation. Perhaps she still hasn't found where she belongs, but she doesn't mind. She loves who she is. She pats the photo gently and slides it back between the pages of the journal, accepting of where she's been, and where she's yet to go. She feels a weight lift from her shoulders, a sort of reconciliation between the end of an old journey and the beginning of a new one. And it's a wonderful feeling.

I put the photo back in my desk, to look at in another 5 years, when I need another reminder of who I've been and how the past is no longer the present. And as I stand up and stretch, ready to move on to another task, I just can't help but smile. I'm no longer a stranger to myself. And I like that.