I was having a conversation with someone not long ago,
relaying my weekend adventures. At the end of my story a perplexed look came
over their face and they said well, you
didn’t used to like to do things like that. Their tone was accusatory, like
I’d offended or lied to them somehow. We’ll get back to that a little later….
I love the movie Campaign with Will Ferrell and Zach
Galifianakis. It perfectly satirizes a world that I call home during my working
hours. The parts we play, the perceptions we encourage and the utter
ridiculousness that can be American politics. I especially love the scene
towards the end when they’re at a debate and Galifianakis’ character pulls out
a “manifesto” that Ferrell’s character wrote in the fifth grade. It was called
“Rainbow Land”. The point of his rather hostile reference is that something
Ferrell wrote that long ago should be held against him now. Certainly he hasn’t
matured into an adult man in his mid-forties. There’s no way he could have
grown and changed and developed an entirely different view of the world quite
opposite to the socialistic leanings his fifth grade-self displayed in “Rainbow
Land”. Why are we so afraid of someone saying I changed my mind? Why would that
make them somehow less?
There’s that word, change. Does anyone really change? I
don’t know the answer to that. I can only speak for myself. There are things I
do differently and feel differently about now than I did when I was in the
fifth grade too. I used to hate beets. I wouldn’t even touch them. I remember
them sitting in a bowl on the table during dinner and thinking how gross and
slimy they looked. Now, I love ‘em, can’t get enough. I tried them at a
friend’s house not too long ago and immediately thought, where have you been all my life gorgeous? Did I change? Or did
something just taste differently to me?
Color looks different to me now too. Perhaps it’s because
children’s fashion nowadays looks like a crayon box vomited. I think it’s a bit
of sensory overload. The city changes your colors too. Black and grey and navy
feel cozy to me now. Pink and purple feel a bit silly. Every seasonal shift I ruthlessly clean out my closet to
save precious space and just make getting ready a bit more manageable. A lot of
color for color’s sake got donated this year. It just didn’t feel right
anymore. Not good or bad or right or wrong, just not right for me.
Have I changed? If I haven’t changed than what has, because
something feels different. Just questions that float through my mind as I get ready for
the newness that, in this case, fall will bring. I always get a little sad. I
don’t like change, ironic, since it always seems to find me.
I think the person I mentioned in the beginning of my story
felt betrayed, like I hadn’t shared a part of myself with them. This was a new
part of me. I don’t think that was ok with them. I think they felt like I was
rejecting them because it was something they don’t like to do. Navigating a
relationship that is changing can be hard. Realizing it may not be salvageable
can be even harder. How do you exist in a new reality? We have grown
differently. If you can’t be happy for the good growth in each other, all be it
in a different direction, how can your relationship continue in any other state
than one of strife and negativity?
Cleaning out my closet is always an experience…..
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