This is so good it makes me . . . angry? I always wanted to be one of them too. I thought it would go away, and much of it has, but I still remember snapping the bone in my arm in high school. The pain of not being one of them is similarly visceral and hard to forget. Like moths to flame, the feeling of “themness” seems to crowd around childhood, as I was completely rid of it until I had a daughter. I felt it again when I had to drop her off at daycare at nine months old, and was acutely aware that my bumper needed to be replaced, and my Honda Accord looked rather shoddy between the Ford F250 and Range Rover in the parking lot. I remembered how they always had new nice cars like Suburbans, and my parents took me to Catholic school in a 15 year old minivan. They also wore Juicy pants, or Abercrombie & Fitch, or Hollister, and had cool haircuts where their bangs were spiked up, and we would talk about who was in their Top 8, and and they would talk about shows we didn’t know because they had cable. In high school, I read A Separate Peace, where (spoiler) at the end the main character bounces his best friend out of a tree out of envy at how easily everything came to him. And almost nobody in my class got it. But I got it, I just didn’t want to speak up. But where these wounds were is a scar tissue that is less patchwork and more mosaic, a tapestry of self discovery and exploration prompted by that feeling of difference and distance. I wouldn’t trade it back, but that doesn’t mean I liked it. And here I am on a random afternoon, meditating on how to give my daughter that discovery and exploration without having her feel the themness. This essay has made me think and feel a lot. Thank you for this gift.
"A masterpiece is something intricate composed by a mentally ill person, which we hang on the wall of a wealthy person, to remind us that suffering can have interesting externalities." HAHAHA!
Yes but CK one made a summer edition at one point and I lost the bottle on a trip to Peru at 16 and I've never been able to find it since and now I'll be on my deathbed at 90 lamenting the fact that I lost the most perfect version of the perfect scent ever. *sadness
Just bought (CK) one of these a week ago specifically because I didn't want to think about it too much and needed something to replace my last one. It, too, has a nostalgic scent for me. It was the perfume I wore when I was in my first serious teen relationship.
(And omg the AXE phase. If you didn't have AXE as a 12y/o boy you didn't fit in where I lived. Sadly—or now after the fact, not so sadly—with AXE on I still didn't fit in.)
This is so good it makes me . . . angry? I always wanted to be one of them too. I thought it would go away, and much of it has, but I still remember snapping the bone in my arm in high school. The pain of not being one of them is similarly visceral and hard to forget. Like moths to flame, the feeling of “themness” seems to crowd around childhood, as I was completely rid of it until I had a daughter. I felt it again when I had to drop her off at daycare at nine months old, and was acutely aware that my bumper needed to be replaced, and my Honda Accord looked rather shoddy between the Ford F250 and Range Rover in the parking lot. I remembered how they always had new nice cars like Suburbans, and my parents took me to Catholic school in a 15 year old minivan. They also wore Juicy pants, or Abercrombie & Fitch, or Hollister, and had cool haircuts where their bangs were spiked up, and we would talk about who was in their Top 8, and and they would talk about shows we didn’t know because they had cable. In high school, I read A Separate Peace, where (spoiler) at the end the main character bounces his best friend out of a tree out of envy at how easily everything came to him. And almost nobody in my class got it. But I got it, I just didn’t want to speak up. But where these wounds were is a scar tissue that is less patchwork and more mosaic, a tapestry of self discovery and exploration prompted by that feeling of difference and distance. I wouldn’t trade it back, but that doesn’t mean I liked it. And here I am on a random afternoon, meditating on how to give my daughter that discovery and exploration without having her feel the themness. This essay has made me think and feel a lot. Thank you for this gift.
thank you for this -- both relaxing and melancholy to be reminded that the longing for belonging never totally stops :)
"A masterpiece is something intricate composed by a mentally ill person, which we hang on the wall of a wealthy person, to remind us that suffering can have interesting externalities." HAHAHA!
Always get such a zing out of your writing - and inspired by how well you write smell. Any other writers you've noticed who do this well?
Yes but CK one made a summer edition at one point and I lost the bottle on a trip to Peru at 16 and I've never been able to find it since and now I'll be on my deathbed at 90 lamenting the fact that I lost the most perfect version of the perfect scent ever. *sadness
have you searched ebay???
Oh right! Now to decide if my deathbed sadness is worth a 200Cad shipment from Moldova haha
Wow
Just bought (CK) one of these a week ago specifically because I didn't want to think about it too much and needed something to replace my last one. It, too, has a nostalgic scent for me. It was the perfume I wore when I was in my first serious teen relationship.
(And omg the AXE phase. If you didn't have AXE as a 12y/o boy you didn't fit in where I lived. Sadly—or now after the fact, not so sadly—with AXE on I still didn't fit in.)