Wandering Alone in the Woods

I had the odd experience not too long ago of watching myself walk into a room. The off-centered feel of it reminded me a little of an exhibit that's up at our local museum. At this exhibit, you walk up stairs and there, on one landing to either side of you, is what looks like a random collection of tall wooden slats standing propped in cement holders and painted with colors and vague tree-ish shapes. You could walk right through it and continue up the stairs. You could wander through the slats looking at them more closely. Or maybe something could catch your eye, a movement a flicker of something up to the left there. When you look to see what's caught your attention, you see yourself wandering through a forest. Through a clever placement of cameras, the artist has created the illusion that you are off having an adventure you don't know anything about in some forest primeval. It takes you by surprise, when you see it, if you see it.

That feeling of stepping through the looking glass is very much how I felt at this cocktail party, chatting and laughing with family and strangers, looking up to see 2 young women walking towards us, and one of them was me. Only of course she wasn't; she was (and is) a close relative, more than 20 years younger than me and taller when I looked more closely. I hadn't seen her for years, and the last time she was still a child. We could all see the obvious similarities back then (red curly hair is hard to miss) but she was too much younger for us to see that she was actually going to become me.

My first feeling was envy, a strong stab of it, looking at this beautiful vibrant young woman striding confidently towards us, smiling. Almost as though she was me, but the improved version, what I wish I could have been then. Self-pity was bitter in my throat; why couldn't I have been strong and confident and happy when I was 18?

Over the course of the next several days my feelings went through a transformation. First, I realized that in many ways I was strong and confident and happy then; it's just that I was also a lot of other things, too: scared, insecure, exhausted, a perfectionist and therefore hard on myself, uncertain what the future might hold. And I was really really good at hiding all of those things from the people around me and projecting only strength and confidence. Maybe, I thought in a flash of insight, maybe she isn't as strong and confident as she looks either. Maybe she doesn't know how beautiful she is. And that might mean I was beautiful then, too, and just didn't know it.

I worked hard then at letting her know what a shining star she is. I can't send a message in a bottle back to myself in time, but I thought at least I can give her something to carry with her into her future. Probably what it means to her now is that she has some kooky relatives. But that doesn't really matter.

What matters is something I discovered in my thirties returning to ballet after many years away. I loved the dance as a child and it was home to me, until I began looking in the mirror and seeing something that only existed in comparison with something else. It became not the joy of barriers melted away, but a slamming up against lots of walls built up out of nowhere, an isolation, so I left it. When I went back, I found the joy of it again, the connection, and realized that I had built my own walls. Instead of looking in the mirror and at the women around me and seeing myself reflected, and the strength and beauty of all of us together, I saw only what I was up against. Any strength and beauty I saw automatically became not mine, separate from me, only desired. But I wasn't seeing truth.

And when I first looked at my young relative, the irony is that I saw myself, but a self that was not mine, a self that I didn't believe in, a self I couldn't live up to, a self that I wanted to have for my own and I had to protect myself against it. When I was able to soften and let that self back in, I could give her an offer of love and acceptance for who she is. Somehow I think that the message in a bottle may have made it back there after all. Maybe now it will get a little easier to glance up at a stranger, and see myself looking back, not a trick of a camera or of genetics, but truth.

copyright 2008 J. Autumn Needles