Lately, my on-repeat song is She Used to Be Mine by Sara Bareilles, from the stage version of Waitress. It’s a love song from the adult she is to the child she was. While certainly I don’t claim to have a stage-ready backstory, I get it. We change as we age, and we change as we grow, and sometimes those two things correspond. Certainly we change in leaps and bounds when we grow (mostly painfully) wiser, however old we are.
Before and afters are irresistible. We love transformation stories. It’s why fitness magazines tell us how Marsha lost 80 pounds and 10 pant sizes. It’s why 17 million people watched the Caitlyn Jenner interview. It’s why our rags to riches love has given us countless Cinderellas, Good Will Huntings and why we cheer when royalty marries a commoner. And conversely, it’s why MSN runs a dozen “90’s sitcoms stars – where are they now?!” stories a week. Transformations are good press, and what we both desire and fear. We can all name our own transformative moments, for better or for worse. Sometimes they’re clear as we’re living through them, and sometimes only in retrospect. Sometimes they’re moments of triumph, sometimes shame, sometimes just blood, sweat and tears. And then, in the after, we can say, that used to be me.
Lewis Carroll’s Alice said, “I knew who I was this morning, but I’ve changed a few times since then.” Rarely do we have a morning as transformational as Alice’s, and yet occasionally we all go down the rabbit hole and come back changed.
These are events that transformed me, when I came through a different person, when I was a before and came back an after:
- Studying abroad
- Failing at marriage
- Having children
- Fixing a marriage
- Getting health(ier)
I went to college out-of-state, but I still left for England a straight arrow kid with a happy childhood and few larger life experiences. And I came home a fairly straight arrow kid with a tattoo, an appreciation of alcohol and friends who broadened my horizons in all the best possible ways. I was still unlikely to disobey posted parking signs, but I was less naively judgmental. Maybe I would have accumulated the same experiences, just more slowly, at home, but I think my life would be completely different if I hadn’t taken my 19-year-old self across an ocean. Not that that was a panacea from future missteps.
Graduating with honors from college with a couple solid internships behind me, I was pretty sure I could write my own ticket. And maybe I could have, but I didn’t. When I got married the first time, at 22, I was my own pied piper, following a pretty fantasy, ignoring storm clouds, afraid to cash in that ticket and take some risks. And so I said yes, because to say no would be starting over and I was moving forward. But all momentum is not equal. It turns out that when you stop betting on yourself, your options become very narrow. You create a bunker that seems safe because you willfully (though with varying degrees of consciousness that are hard to determine in retrospect) created it without windows. For a variety of reasons that aren’t worth getting into here, I became smaller and smaller in that bunker. Failing at marriage was perhaps the best thing I ever did, for me. 2002 wasn’t my best year. But failure isn’t final. Sometimes it’s really just the beginning.
When you are pregnant, people say things to you like, It will change you. Your love is suddenly exponential, they say; you view the nightly news differently; your heart breaks in a million ways you never knew possible and your worries become infinite, and packing away outgrown onsies makes you cry. All true. Also your gag reflex will suffer indignities you never even considered, and then those things will become normal. You’ll realize that all the plans made for your child’s first year of development were brainstormed by the you that slept through the night and showered regularly, and suddenly Target disposable diapers look like an entirely reasonable compromise, and so sorry about the landfills. How did generations of mothers use diaper pins? Did they not require sleep to function with sharp objects? Your brain never quite recovers. Every morning you wake up foggy with a chance of mid-morning clarity. You’re more patient and stronger and more flexible and more tired. And you really do love to the moon and back. But you’re a complete before and after.
The thing about getting married (again, but at 25), and having children, and buying a house and paying for daycare, and losing jobs and having your plans falling apart is that it’s a lot. Not necessary more than anyone else, but just a lot. Sometimes too much. And if you forget that burdens shared are burdens halved, you start keeping all that angst to yourself, deep down, where it begins to rankle. Just a little. And then, slowly, it begins to fester, not so deep down, but closer to the surface, and all of a sudden, you’re just an angry, angry, disappointed person. And because your partner is also in the same boat, just as angry and disappointed in you as you are in them, your before and after is very much in the balance. Sometimes, the only answer is to walk away. Sometimes, you stay and fight, even though the fight is long and hard and sometimes seems like one step forward and five steps back. But you inch forward. And then sometimes, in the after, it’s like taking a deep breath, rounding a sudden hairpin curve and seeing the valley stretching out in front of you. It’s beautiful, and it’s green, and it needs to be tended, but it’s ready for fresh roots.
Before and after is never a sum total game. But the more transformations we have, we’re beginning to shape the who we want to eventually be. Because I failed, because I fought, because I joyfully, slowly, painfully grew, I’m healthier in mind, body and spirit than I was at 22, at 25. A year ago, I wasn’t the same person I am today, and thank goodness for that.
Our younger selves deserve a love song, even as imperfect as we were. We deserve the same today, imperfect as we remain. But better, perhaps, than yesterday. We were the before. We are the after, and we will be again.
As Alice said, “It’s no use going back to yesterday. I was a different person then.” Weren’t we all. And let’s go forward, thinking impossible things that create new happy (ever) after.
Love this!!