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i'm glad i take pix or i'd remember even less of this day-to-day blur called life. just dumped some pix into facebook so could grab most-easily this one of my sister & i when we were wee as well as the one of james as a fierce-looking young pop warner football player (what a game face!) & while looking at photos, i remembered all kinds of other neat things i've gotten to do lately which had immediately slipped out of my head til triggered by pix... to keep it short, right now there are great photographs by mexican artists at both the bakersfield museum of art & the latin american museum of art in long beach. some of the same photos appear in both exhibits, in fact! of the two exhibits, i think the bakersfield one actually is better, which makes me proud of my friendly smoggy dumb-headed hometown. it has its pleasantries, for sure. go see either or both exhibits while you can! also, the LAMOA or however it's abbreviated is free on sundays. :)
wanted to post the pic of angie & i cause it's her birthday weekend & i just love her so very much: she really is such a wonderful human. this picture for me captures what a lovable darling little sprite she was as a child (this reminds me: you should check out the gentle french film TOMBOY on netflix to see adorable children w/all their beautiful funny honest awkward intelligent touching ways)... looking at these photos, i can see that my hair's the same still, but my face sure is different now!; james, on the other hand, tho his hairline be now receded in a very striking & manly manner, still has that same face!
the other day we were talking about photos. only one or two remain of me from ages 11-12 to 16-17 or so. i just hated the way i looked in those blooming years of body dysmorphia, a condition that would stain my life from my teens up to my early 40s!! i'd look in the mirror & get a sinking sense of doom. i wanted to die when i looked in the mirror!! i would run from the camera as well as try to hide my awkward bulk behind anything: a placemat, a wall, another person, a book...
yes, i remember deeply the horror of puberty, realizing i'd never look like my favorite actors did (life would be much easier if i were a boy, i thought for years), that instead i was morphing from a rather athletic kid in 6th grade into a what-i-just-knew-to-be-homely beast, that the way i was changing was some cruel cosmic joke.
in meetings, people say here & there that booze saved their lives for many years. it was thus for me. drinking/etc decreased substantially my self-consciousness & inhibition. i took that drink, &, like a magic elixir, it granted me a sense of ease & comfort for a time, but then the drink took me... anyways... i write about this all the time, & it gets boring, but it was a big deal for me & still is & maybe someone reading this will relate & not waste decades of life in self-hatred due to something as ephemeral as the meatbag called a body. onward,turns out james didn't like his pic taken when he was a teen, either. he even destroyed most all his pictures, like i did! this caused me pause cause james is physically attractive. but he thought he was not. he, too, thought that he looked monstrous. imagine!!
knowing now my handsome husband also thought he was ugly makes me think maybe i was wrong all along. maybe i was just a teenaged girl, even if not a pretty one. i didn't deserve all that self-loathing & would be a fool to indulge any such thinking today.
yes, people go thru this & come out the other side. if you're going through it, drop the rock. you're ok just as you are. you are one human in billions. you've got this one life. get right-sized & carpe diem! and if you can't/won't accept yourself as-is, do something healthy to change your fate. "fall down seven times, stand up eight."
ok, off to organize books now, then hit the highway once again! :D