A new pair of jeans has an effect on
one's confidence the way a sunny day has on one's disposition after weeks of
rain. Confidence balloons in chests, vanity bounces footfalls, and
embarrassment no longer haunts every incident of bending forward. But new jeans
must be treated with extreme care. They
must be completely turned inside out and washed in cold water, lest their
indigo nature leak out, infecting everything nearby with a sickly pallor. Hot tumble-drying causes shrinkage after which
floodwater inseams and squeezed upward muffin-top ensue, while hang drying
leaves one with crispy plaster pants that gather in the wrong places, refuse to
fall correctly, and generally make a nuisance of themselves. Sitting becomes an
ordeal because of slipping waists, belt shifts, and rear cleavage exposure, but
worst of all is the savage pinch and resistance provided when one attempts to
bend more than thirty degrees in any direction. Though new jeans give one, or
perhaps two, glorious days of buoyant self-assuredness, their first mash-up
with real life dousing and agitation leaves little remaining besides a bundle
of stress shaped like trousers.
Much like life.
Stepping into new things feels great.
Initially. A seemingly perfect fit in
work or relationships or new ventures gives you a secret arrogance, which
causes you to believe nothing could ever go wrong. Then, what begins
beautifully suddenly rejects every control you’ve attempted to enforce. Your
irresistible cuteness has become sullied somehow; what made you loveable and
desired reverses without notice and becomes hideous and irritating. Unexpected
changes force you to hop around awkwardly, jerking this and tugging that and
rushing to cover up humiliating exposure just to keep things running, though
not smoothly anymore. You’re drenched with an onslaught of garbage that makes
you choke and sputter, chafes you raw and tangles you into knots before
spinning you into complete oblivion so that you longer have any idea which way
is up. The result of this, of life, is
the certainty of your infinite smallness, inflexibility, and fear of fitting
the curves of another’s, possibly and probably better, ideas.
As all things do, this will pass, with
excruciating time. Stay strong, despite being forced to face your weaknesses. Soon,
you will earn the faded stripes of holding strong against tightly pulled
wrinkles in not-quite-so-carefully engineered plans. You will display the bowed
knees of hunching down and back to square one. You will exhibit the patched bottom of stretching
thin, wearing out, and repairing constantly, sometimes with the wrong colored
thread that shows so obviously in the bright sunlight of another’s
observation. Patched and threadbare do
not equal worthlessness. The uniqueness
of being worn means challenged but
not defeated, and tried but not overcome. Wear your life like jeans, for it
will, though no longer new, fit better and more comfortably than anything
you’ve ever imagined.
The path of water in the sand. Taken at Gooch's Beach in Kennebunkport, ME. © Heidi Tauschek, 2011 |
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