catelin | Snap

A shot taken on a hot afternoon, sábado at the Alamo, all of us looking fierce in our green and black finery. I don't like the picture at first. The vain bitch voice that lives inside my head points out everything that's wrong...too fair as usual, face too broad and frank, squinty little eyes, giant nose. See how awful you look next to her? she hisses. What were you ever thinking? You look ridiculous.

The thing is, over the years, I've gotten really pissed at that nasty little voice. I've grown impatient with it and I don't have much use for it these days. I used to say that I had no regrets about my life or the way I've lived it and several months ago I took that back. I was talking to a girl who is beautiful, drop-dead absolutely fucking gorgeous. She was so critical of herself, so intent on cataloguing every flaw that she was missing it completely. That's when I realized that I'd done the same thing to myself for decades. I didn't say anything to her, but I did say something to another girl. Ironically enough, it was on the same day this photo was taken. One of the girls, beautiful and graceful in the way you don't see very often anymore, began to quietly point out everything that she hated about her body and her face. She dreaded being photographed because she never came out looking "decent."

I told her that I had only one regret so far in my life and it was this: that I was so goddamn cruel to my younger self regarding my physical appearance that I never caught a glimpse of how beautiful I was back then. That I completely missed it and by the time I realized it enough to appreciate, it was gone. I see it now when I look at the rare photos where someone managed to catch me unawares, where I wasn't frozen in a horrible anxious pose or mugging to hide my intense fear of not photographing well. Don't get me wrong; I didn't think of myself as ugly. I knew my best and worst features by heart. I did, however, think of myself as never good enough. You know the drill, right, girls? Never pretty enough. Never thin enough. Never a flat enough belly. Never a rounded enough hip. Never full enough lips or big enough eyes. You name it. I had my own whole earth catalog of flaws that I could keep myself busy with all day.

That's my regret. I wish I'd been kinder to myself then. I caught myself listening to that awful voice more lately, coming into my forties. It's hard not to do when I spend several days a week around several dozen gorgeous women who are ten to twenty years my junior. I'd silently berate myself for different "flaws"--wrinkles, too many freckles, a neckline that's starting to show its age, arm flab, ass flab, belly flab...a whole fucking flabalanche. I'd like to say that I tell myself "fuck it" and don't give it much thought. And that's actually how it is most of the time. I want to be kinder to myself through this next transition into the woman I am becoming. I was a beautiful girl in my twenties. I rarely let myself see that, and then only in very superficial ways. In my thirties, much of the same, overcome in part by the birth of my two boys. I slowly began to grow into my body and my face, to accept that I had value beyond the external.

So when I caught myself letting that horrid voice drown me with it's awful criticism, I stopped looking. I set the picture down and didn't come back to it again, until I could remind myself that I deserve better than that. I will not regret the same sort of nonsense with my older self, so I sit down and take a good long look at it.

I see me. I'm forty-one years old. I'm next to one of my dearest friends who happens to be about 12 years younger than I am. I see a woman whose middle-age crazy ended up bringing together a bunch of women on skates. I was with a group of ladies that I love, having a blast on a Saturday afternoon in one of my favorite cities in the world. I see my new and improved skater's ass and another best friend behind the camera. The crowds of tourists were watching us like we were rock stars. I flirted and wore silly false eyelashes like an aging showgirl. I had a snowcone with tamarindo and chile. A man who looked like Pedro Infante blew me a kiss from the street. I snuck a couple of cigarettes and wore bright fushia flowers in my hair. I laughed. I laughed a lot. I look beautiful to myself because I know I was happy. It was a good day. That's what I see with my kinder eyes.

Lesson learned after twenty or so years: All the flaws soften as I widen my focus to include the rest of the picture--my life going on around me.

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Date: 2005-09-20 05:14 am (UTC)

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