*****Because I was never a boy....I was a girl.........................................................
There is something about songs that take you back to places.
I was standing next to the sink brushing my teeth listening to some oldies rock song, muttering words, that I don’t even know how I know, and thinking back to when I was about six or seven…
We used to have this summer home a couple hours away from our house, just past the city, nestled up in the woods, right on a huge river. Even though it was called a summer home, we didn’t stay their all summer, but rather, would go for the weekend when the weather was particularly nice or my parents were feeling more adventurous then usual. I remember thinking it was the greatest place, because I was allowed to walk all around alone. I would walk down what seemed to be thousands of old cement steps, across a rickety wooden bridge and to a small wooden building where you could buy food. I always thought this was the coolest thing, because I could charge it to my dad (he gave me permission,) which meant that I could sit on the big, round, wooden stools and pick out the five cent Now and Later’s and Jolly Ranchers, and put it all on my dad’s tab. The older kids would play pool and stick their extra coins in the jut box, and I would get especially excited when the song “Love Shack” came on…please, don’t ask me why, I have no idea. During the afternoons I would go down to the beach with my mom, we would take a huge umbrella and set it up on the sandy shore, then I was to wade in the muddy river, build things out of wet sand and rocks, and make friends with the other little kids on the beach. Sometimes at night we would go for walks, and the pine scent and cool breeze would wrap all around me as my dad pushed me on the swing. Or my dad would impress me with his rock skipping skills, as the sand polished stone would dance at least five times across the rivers face. On the weekends they would have night movies on a big screen, and I remember I would sit on the wood bench, wrapped in an old blanket and watch something like “The Mighty Ducks.” Or sometimes I would go off by myself and play in this mosey tree stump area. I would swing from the branches of vines that were implanted for aesthetic purposes, and end up making it about a centimeter off the ground, and not thinking much of my lack of coordination. Back at the cabin my dad would read me stories before I fell asleep, or we’d watch some cheesy cartoon, like “Rocky and Bowlwinkle.” I always wanted to play my dad’s guitar and make up ridiculous “fake rock songs” about things like bunny rabbits, and for some reason my parents never stopped me. When night came I would climb into the bed, which was always so comfortable, and smell the musty scent that the old place had and that my mom incessantly complained about, and fall into sleep.
I don’t know why that song made me think of this, but I like this memory. Sometimes I just want to be little again, it was so much simpler. When I was little I could say things that I wanted to say without worrying about what people thought, I was constantly cute, or at least unaware if I wasn’t, I felt so loved, and though it’s not that I have serious issues with these things now, I can’t deny that the thought of being little is appealing.
Life is good, it’s great, but sometimes it just gets tiring, and when I was at the cabin, settled in the woods, being tired never registered to me.
I get sick of trying…if someone is going to love me, they are going to have to love me as I am. Even if that means that I giggle at the most awkward times, if too much of my teeth show when I laugh, if I don’t have a perfect figure, if I talk too much when I get nervous, if I laugh really hard when I make a mistake, if I don’t know how to say things I want to say because I’m too afraid, if I do stupid girly things, and if I am completely 100% unexplainable—they are going to have to love me, or else I’m sorry, but I give up, because if they can’t learn to appreciate that, then they obviously forgot to look a little deeper and see that maybe I’m worth seeing. And if not, I’m fine with just me-God-my quirky roommate, and our grandma like sleeping habits.