*****
Listening to Adele’s Someone Like You always makes me cry. I love the video of her walking in Paris.
It’s about love, such a precarious thing. A falling, a trickling down, a catching. An ever-changing thing, just as the people who are in the thick of it. It can be taken for granted. It can be a chameleon. It can sit like a coiled snake in the corner, waiting to bite you. Or it can be warm cookies with milk while watching back-to-back episodes of Homeland curled up next to each other.
Someone Like You is also about abandonment. Being left alone. A love lost. I always have this fear. I don’t know where it comes from. It applies to everyone in my life, not only my husband, but also my friends. I’m afraid they’ll decide they don’t like me and they’ll walk away. Leave me. I’m sometimes good at holding myself at a distance in advance, just in case. Like preparation for the inevitable.
People change. Expectations change too as we grow and evolve. Adjustments are made. Or aren’t. Is there always room to expand? Or can we run out of room and find ourselves crammed into a space that no longer fits?
I’m not the same person I was 10, or 20 years ago. I have wrinkles and facial fuzz and some pink hair. I have a fleur-de-lis tattoo.
I saw a woman walking yesterday. She had on a coral skirt that showed off her tan, shapely calves. Nude heels, a handbag with a matchy-matchy scarf tied around the handle that coordinated with her top. Her hair was soft and wavy. She walked tall and I thought to myself, “I will never look like her. I will never be her.” I imagined her sneering at me. But she didn’t even see me.
Some days I’m okay with that, my invisibility vs. my assumptions, people watching, etc. Some days I’m not. Because although I can clean up real good, most days I’m just me. I struggle with the inside vs the outside, me as a writer, an entrepreneur, a worker bee, a volunteer, a mom, a Jew, a wife, a sister, a daughter. Those are all inside things mostly. I claim them. Mostly. But the outside me…I don’t know how she appears. She’s a chameleon.
If you’re not okay with that, I guess you’ll find someone new. And I’ll wish nothing but the best for you.
I hate to turn up out of the blue, uninvited.
But I couldn’t stay away, I couldn’t fight it
I had hoped you’d see my face and that you’d be reminded
That for me, it isn’t over yet
Never mind, I’ll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you, too
Don’t forget me, I beg, I remember you said
Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead, yeah
Nothing compares, no worries or cares
Regrets and mistakes, they’re memories made
Who would have known how bittersweet this would taste?
I love your writing, Erin. You captured so much here that I don’t even know where to start. Let me just say, I’m glad you’re not still who you were 10 or 20 years ago. You’ve grown, evolved; and your passion for what’s important would never have had a chance to blossom and grown if you just stayed the same.
Oh Sara. Your comment makes me feel happy…happy that you think it’s a good thing I’m not who I used to be. Despite worrying that others may not feel similarly. And yes, my passion…I’ve found it. It exhausts me sometimes, but I’ve laid my hands on it. Finally.
xoxo
Wow, Erin. That was incredible. I feel so many of the same fears you shared. People change, that is for sure. I believe that there is always room to grow. Loved this piece.
Jenn,
Thanks so much for reading. It’s comforting to me to know that others share some of these feelings, too—that it’s not just me. None of is ever alone, really, but it’s just hard to remember that and remind ourselves of it. xoxo
As soon as I started reading your post, it reminded me of my marriage, still going strong after almost 27 years. People change, both of us have, but we have also grown closer.
AlwaysARedhead,
I love your comment. It makes me feel better. I sometimes worry my husband doesn’t like or understand the things I do or feel or what I’m going after in life…we can be so different. I know that’s not necessarily bad, but…I’m growing a mile a minute and I can barely keep up with myself…and he has to deal with it, even when I DON’T KNOW HOW TO DEAL WITH IT….
I hear this and feel this, deeply. Sometimes I worry that if people lovelovelove who I was ten years ago, can they really feel the same way as I change? Become more “me”? I don’t know. You said it beautifully, though.
Angela,
That was something else I was thinking about—i.e. high school friends. I have a handful I am still in touch with. A few I thought I was still close with. But then…things change somehow. Unravel slowly, over time. It’s maybe no one’s fault, but…it’s still hard.
xoxo
This is beyond lovely, Erin. P.S. There are those who look at YOU and say ‘I’ll never look like her. I’ll never be her.’ You are amazing.
This is awesomeness.
Change is inevitable. There is nothing but change. The only constant is that we are still standing here, breathing, alive. My insides and outside sometimes match, sometimes not. I’m usually okay with that. Mostly.
You’ve made me think yet again. xo
I love that song. I try to keep things the same; I am a fan of status quo. But when I look around some of the greatest things in my life came from – or with – big changes. So change can’t be all bad, after all.
I feel this way a lot, in fact the older I get the more I feel like this. You captured the ache and the LOVE of those relationships (from marriage, to friendships, to women we admire (LIKE YOU!!!!) so beautifully.
I never want to lose the people I love and admire in my life.
xo
Yes. And I so get the keeping yourself apart. I’m a wall builder. If I don’t let anyone in then they can’t hurt me. it is something I’m working to overcome.
Damn facial fuzz. I have it too. What is THAT about???
No, we are NOT the same as we were all those years ago. Time and experience have changed us and I feel like a chameleon a lot too, trying to adapt to my surroundings and sometimes oh so slowly making my way in this big world…
p.s. I could never decide I don’t like you. You are just TOO good to not like and love.
xoxo
You perfectly capture the ache, the pull we all have for so much that changes as we get older: for our former selves, for the selves we will never be, for memories of places that we’ve been. I love that song too. Have you seen the Saturday Night Live skit of a bunch of women sitting around crying together over that song?
I, too, wish I was like that woman walking down the street but I know that is not the path that I’m on in life. Of course, we know nothing of her and she could be dressed up for something special and be like us the rest of the time.
Why is it that we worry so much about what losing the love of friends, family, etc?
I have such a hard time with friendships because I worry that I’m not liked. I don’t put effort into these relationships because I worry that that effort will be pushy and annoying. It is so hard to wonder these things – what people think of us.
I have never seen you in person, but I have seen your online persona. Through your pictures, you are beautiful. Through your writing, you are beautiful. I don’t know about what everyone else sees, but that is what I see.
Erin, I wonder if you are inside my head? 🙂 I often wonder how I look to others. I would love to be the perfectly polished put-together woman, but it just isn’t me. In the back of my head, I’m always a bit paranoid that people don’t like me. Or that they don’t dislike me, but I’m inconsequential. I have a few ideas where this comes from. So interesting the games our mind plays.
I think the “just you” part of you is extra good and just as lovely as the “cleaned” up version of you. You are genuine and working to change the world in a big way. Matchy-matchy doesn’t hold a candle to the aesthetics of that kind of beauty.
Love this song and love this post!
I tend to close my eyes during the song. And why do we do this? The comparing thing? You’ll never be her but you are you and you’re better at being you than thinking about how she isn’t you. Yet even as I type this I am thinking about how I do this. All the time.
So great. With age comes the realization that no one looks at us quite the way we look at ourselves. No one else would focus on us enough to be that judgmental, because they are too busy judging themselves. When we figure this out we are free to be exactly who we are, all the time.
I truly truly do not like change…but I have come to the realization that change has made me stronger, even in my weakest hour.
Xxx KISS from MN.
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