Coming Face to Face With My Younger Self

I was in a tough place mentally before she appeared. 

It was the final clean out of my mom’s home, an emotional and arduous task that was mostly completed last spring save for the 4 giant cages filled to the top in the storage room of her condo complex. We’ll get to them eventually, I thought, at capacity and unable to sort through even a single additional piece of history, nostalgia, or any of the other unknown items that were stowed away in that dusty room. I was exhausted in a way that was hard to shake, which would explain why I (and my brothers) waited almost a full year to finish the job, just days before the sale of her home.

It’s a very strange thing to try to unspool a life while your own flashes before your eyes. I still have trouble finding the words to express the overwhelming, multidimensional mind-f*ck of it all; there is extreme sadness but there is also comfort and joy in the memories. There’s full-on annoyance at your loved one who should have gotten rid of some of the shit she left behind (although in fairness to her, she did warn me). And there is irony in the idea that while you are there to pack, you are also, in some sense, unpacking. Unpacking what it means to be alive, how the things that surround us factor in, and what remains at the proverbial end of the day.   

I unlocked the first cage, which was stuffed to the brim with bits and pieces of my young life. But before I got to the containers of books, the boxes of school memorabilia, the photos, etc., I pulled out a large silver frame that was peeking out from behind all of that stuff.

And there she was.

From long ago and far away.

A long-since forgotten portrait of 21-year-old me, a charcoal sketch done somewhere on the streets of Rome on a college graduation trip I took with a friend and our moms, a discovery that was equal parts jarring and delightful.

I stared at her for a long while, studying this young version of me as seen through the eyes of another, marveling at how the artist captured my asymmetrical face, my slightly droopy left eye, and I the way I interpret it, my desire to be seen as a grown-up through my serious expression. 

I put her aside to continue the job of clearing out, but I couldn’t stop thinking about her- who she was then, what she was feeling in that moment as she traveled with her mom who had just been treated for breast cancer, what her hopes and dreams were. I felt a tenderness for her, a young woman who didn’t yet know her value, who didn’t fully appreciate that beautiful alchemy of youth and possibility.

The real live version with her mama, Rome, 1990

As I sorted through the last relics of my mom’s life, I daydreamed about the conversation I would have with the girl in that frame if I could go back in time. I thought about how I would tell her not to worry so much. How I would explain to her that her worth was not determined by the money she didn’t have then or anything else external. I would tell her that she was smart, strong and resilient, and that her success in life would be tied not to money or career, but to her heart and to her soul; to the love in her life, to her relationships and to her being in true alignment. Oh, and I would also tell her to wear the damn sunscreen!

She probably would have politely listened, but I’m not sure she would have grasped what I was saying. Because I think that with so much of life, we have to live it to learn it. Wisdom is that lived experience, that ability to discern context and meaning, to connect the dots, to synthesize all of it, and it’s one of the things I love most about getting older. 

But looking at her, that young woman with her smooth, unlined skin, her whole life in front of her, also underscored for me some of the challenges of getting older.

For dramatic effect before she was put into storage!

When I was younger, I’d wake up and head straight to the mirror, full of collagen and vanity. The vanity remains, but the collagen is gone, and some days I don’t fully recognize the person staring back at me, which is paradoxical because in many ways, I feel more myself than ever before.

But even in an evolved state, it can be difficult to observe the physical changes that seem to happen gradually, and then all at once. The changes to skin texture. The sagging jowls. The lines- so many lines. The neck that looks to be melting at certain angles. Fortunately, I am more generous about offering myself grace these days, but the physical transformation is undeniable. 

I am not a big interventionist when it comes to these matters, although I do use my fair share of ridiculously pricey products. When I was 40 and completely unwilling to accept my newly forming crow’s feet, I got Botox. And while it softened some of those lines, new ones appeared below my eyes, so I didn’t do more. I think it was the beginning of a very slow journey to accepting that aging was inevitable, no matter how I fought or tried to deny the reality. 

Still, after my mom died and I was feeling awful and looking like I hadn’t slept in a year, I decided to try Botox again. This time, I ignored my crow’s feet which no longer bothered me, instead hoping that a shot in the 11’s and above the eyebrows would help me look more awake. Make me feel more like me. It did, a bit, and a little filler gave me a slight lift, but I’m terrible at this kind of maintenance (you should see my nails), and I’m not sure how long I’ll play what feels a little like a game of whack-a-mole. I’ve promised myself to just monitor my feelings as I go, and to keep digging deep as to the why. 

The truth is that most days you will find me sitting somewhere on the middle of a spectrum- at one end is radical acceptance, and at the other, a plastic surgeon! The inner conflict is real. I do a lot of grappling. But the one thing I’m absolutely clear on is that I love myself, lines and all, even if they bother me sometimes, and I am grateful every single day that I get to be here. 

Ultimately, I’m not sure what I’ll do with that charcoal sketch - for now she’s in storage. But once I got over the shock of seeing that long-forgotten image, it was a gift to come face to face with her; she was powerful, much more so than she realized at that age. She made me think, and she made me feel. 

She made me wonder what, God willing, 85-year-old me will have to say to 55-year-old me. 

And in the same vein of what I wrote about here last week, she reminded me how far I’ve come. 

And how far I can still go…

Dina xx

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