21-ish

Do we build on who we were or do we just keep reinventing ourselves?

Last week over at fezbook, people were posting pictures of their 21 year old selves. I found this one hiding in the dusty recesses of my computer, from when I was around 21, or maybe 22. This was taken by a friend, on the balcony from the 2nd floor of our very poorly insulated and heated apartment. This was in Western Massachusetts in the late 1970’s. It was your typical student/post student apartment. Kind of rundown at the heels, but with a funky charm and free on street parking. There was no sink in the bathroom, so I painted a picture of one, and taped it on the wall.

I sometimes look back at different periods of my life, and feel like they don’t have much connection to each other. Of course, you have to move through point C to get to point L. But still, there are definite turning points from one life to another, and sometimes they don’t connect in the moment.

I think I had a happy early childhood…

but I’m not sure when that ended.

Maybe when we moved from one end of the state to the other when I was six, leaving the friends who lived on either side of our house, to go to a new city. I don’t think I continued being the same person I was before.

School was not fun. I was shy and had a hard time making friends. I liked to draw, and I liked to read, so perhaps the seeds of being an artist and storyteller were planted then.

Leaving home to go to college was the start of yet another existence. There is also a subset of existence when I transferred from a big university to a smaller art school in the same city. The people I saw from day to changed for the most part, but I kept my few close friends from the University. I graduated from college and a few months later packed my van and ran away to Massachusetts, with a bit of a detour along the way.

I barely recognize these seemingly confident young women. Are we still in here somewhere? I think so, but the fog of time obscures so many of the details of how I got from there to here.

I will have to continue this at a another time, as I could go on and on with all the different me’s I have been.

But this was me, at 21-ish. I think she still has things to tell me, if I can only listen.