So despite my initial hesitation regarding my new heavy
bangs I’ve come to really love this new ‘do. I haven’t felt so good about how I look in a long time. This may be due to the fact that having
bangs has forced me to shower more frequently because slept on bangs look, well, not
cool. And as long as I’m showering
I might as well put on real clothes (read: not yoga pants) and throw on some
mascara. And voila! I look 95% better than I ever did
pre-bangs. Regardless, most days I
actually kind of like what I see in the mirror and that is huge.
Recently though I’ve come to wonder if maybe my bangs even have
magical powers.
For example, tonight I went to a yoga sculpt class at the
hot yoga place. I love yoga sculpt
and I love it even more when it’s done in a heated room. Yoga sculpt is like yoga on steroids with weights and cardio
and none of the “Om” meditation crap.
Add all the extra sweating that comes when you do it in a heated room
and I leave there feeling like I’ve actually worked out.
Last week I saw someone that I thought may have been a
sorority sister in college. I
wasn’t totally sure, and we never made enough eye contact to know for sure if
she saw and recognized me. So I
left without saying anything.
This week I saw her again. My instinctive reaction was to keep an eye on her during
class without making eye contact and hope she approached me afterwards to say,
“don’t I know you?” I know it’s
silly, but I always do this. If I
see someone I recognize I avoid all eye contact and let the other person make
the effort to come to me. I could
try to make an excuse for this, pretend that it’s because I don’t want to
bother this person, or put them in an awkward position if they don’t recognize
me. This, however, would be a
total lie. The truth is I don’t
ever make the first move in situations like this because I don’t want to give
someone else the power that comes with being recognized by someone you don’t
remember. I don’t want to risk
letting someone think they’ve made me insignificant.
** This is where I would add a footnote, if blogs had
footnotes, to say that this exchange of power is absolutely real and you are
lying if you think people don’t secretly revel in it. I know because I have.
It was in the toothpaste aisle at Jewel. I got the “Colleen?
Is that you?” from a girl I knew in elementary and middle school. She once belonged to a group of
“friends” that hurt my feelings for most of grades six through eight. (Middle school is brutal pals.) And when she approached me in the
grocery store after seven years I couldn’t place her. I played it off, stalling and asking generic questions until
I figured out who she was. And
then I left, taking no small amount of joy in the fact that this person who had
once made me feel so bad and unimportant, was now someone I didn’t even
recognize amidst tubes of Colgate and Crest. In jr. high I would have put a bazillion dollars on this
exchange going down the other way, myself being cast as still small,
unimportant and unrecognized. I
know, I know. This makes me a
horrible human being. But middle
school wounds, man. They run deep. Ok. Footnote over.**
Any way, at some point during yoga I looked up into the
mirror and saw that my bangs miraculously still looked pretty good. This was no small feat considering the
amount of sweating going on in there.
And with that discovery I thought- I’m going
to approach her after class. Who cares if she doesn’t recognize
me? That doesn’t make me
insignificant.
And that right there is huge pals. Her response does not determine my worth. After spending years allowing others’
reactions to me completely influence how I feel about myself, this sweet
freedom feels just like that.
Freedom. It’s a Christmas
miracle. Or maybe it’s the magic
of the bangs. Or probably just the
normal maturing that comes as I approach thirty. Regardless, I’ll take it.
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