It’s the night of the 2005 homecoming dance.
My friends stole my spew-green Land’s End boots so I couldn’t leave just yet. As I turned around to find them, *he* appeared and held out a hand to ask me to dance. They knew.
I still feel the warmth of that slow dance (the feeling of “at last! I was picked!”) I was wearing rainbow toe socks, and jeans I decorated with primary-colored crayon-wax, by using the burning part of a hot glue gun. (I never brought myself to wear them again.)
The 15 years that followed have been one long cringe—at the boots, the way I had ripped off one pocket of those Limited Too jeans (for fashion), and, OH, my pink suede beret. Oh the beret! Oh no!
I wasn’t sure what I was doing, or who I was. I expressed myself with the vocabulary I had on hand. And that’s how it’s always been: bad, getting better, until I realized I was wrong all along and it was never so bad as I made it out to be. What I thought was a cringe was actually a settling; an acceptance of everything that ever broke my precious heart. A recognition. A repentance.
These years have been a long walk to my front door, ending with a sweet cheek-kiss that says, “we’re okay now.” Deep down, I wish the pang of that homecoming memory could linger a little longer, that it could speak softly about its adoration of me and stick apologies all over like bandages. But it won’t, and it refuses to stand down from its podium of pain—why? How can a heart so full still ache for a remedy it no longer needs?
I see it, now. It was about being chosen for the first time. I was picked, like a weird penny, from a raucous fountain I’d cast wishes into my whole life. I wish, now, it could be so simple as longing for someone to choose me—instead, I am tasked with the difficult duty of choosing myself.
We all want to be picked, as if we are one shiny golden apple among a million pointless prickly pears. We want to be be kissed on the forehead in a high school gymnasium, to feel the lingering warmth of our first—and last—certain embrace. The embrace, that once it ends, releases us to the danger of self-discovery without even packing our lunch.
Everyone’s just a frantic dog, chasing after the car of belonging. Do you need more metaphors? What I’m saying is this: It’s lonely out here, and high school broke everyone’s hearts. Be gentle.
Next Steps: Drink a glass of water, text one of those friends that stole your boots that day (and who later came to your wedding to a different, and more well-suited, person), and choose yourself today, you weirdo.