beliefs

Talking last evening with a delightful friend, she challenged me about someone I labelled. Then, later, I challenged her back. Both of us, at each challenge, paused for thought. So much that dribbles out of our mouths comes from learned opinions, until, that is, we are challenged on a single word, a resolution, a definition, a dereliction. This child is…….this man/woman is…….my father was, my mother is. He can’t fit in because he is……….She is just a……… and so on. We were taught these labels by those who influenced us at an early age, and, without thought, we continue the line.

So, let us think. Let us notice. So very many of us, gazillions, I reckon, have felt out of the uniform kilter, like our underpants are showing and everyone is laughing, or judging, or turning away in disapproval. Crowd thinking, or Coward thinking. If you are like me, all you want is inclusivity, gentle acceptance, the chance to learn whom another really is, what makes them tick, because I know they have a story that isn’t mine and through their story, I can learn to be the best person I can be. Surely I am not alone in this? The current, and understandable (sort of) culture of fear around invasion on all levels, the one that throws we Ordinaries, into a big old D I Lemma, is here, whether we fight it or engage with it. We cannot stop it, and nor should we, because there is learning here, there are stories, life experiences, if shared, that can juxtaposition our ingrained thinking. We can lift above what was considered THE RIGHT WAY. I won’t fiddle in a yelling crowd. Nobody is listening to the new music in such a place, but I do believe that if just a few among the gazillions refuse to label and, thus, to marginalise, to exclude, there is hope for this blood-stained world of ours.

I spent my sentient childhood knowing I was different. Not a fitter-in. I knew not the language to speak myself out, and thereafter to stand strong, too swamped in middle class beliefs, in how girls should (SHOULD) behave, whom is acceptable as a boyo, what is okay to wear, etc. My folks I judge not. They were of their time and, with four pretty girls, they were probably fraught as hell, and for years. So I was ‘just’ a rebel’ and without cause. And, that is true. I just reacted to any confinement with an energy I could not understand, nor process. So, I was labelled. There was a relaxo parental breath around that. Difficult, is one word I remember. In other words, I wasn’t their fault.

And, yet, my mouth can still label. Although I don’t like it at all, swipe at my lips and twitch my head in fury as I hear what I just said, I cannot deny it flowed out into the evening. And how do I feel? Initially smug. Oh god, God, gods, that is so not who I am now! Hmmmm, respond the god, God, gods, and I don’t blame them.

There is a lot of something around resolution. In music, I know it well, when even a naughty musician adds an extra bar, or fricks about with an elongated ending, and, (I’m avoiding the But), it is all about finding the warm security of the finite, of the landing, and of putting an end to this thing. In my young days, nobody wanted to stand out from the safety of the crowd, and, everybody wanted to stand out from the safety of the crowd. We were longing to be mongrels. We didn’t want the middle class confines, even as that life gave us security and privilege. In my day, to conjoin (OMG) with those who were not from our ‘level’ was anathema. Not to us, but we were wild, and, I am happy to say, even in our years, we still are, but now we have learned to speak, to stand, to rejink what we say, we will not judge, we will not, we will not and, more, because of the way we have learned our lives, spat out old beliefs, and found our own voices, we will stand and fight for inclusion and acceptance.

Authentically Mongrel. Did I just label myself?

I have begun. Pulling jeans out of the jeans drawer, way too small, way too skinny-legged for me now and, yet, held on to like a Precious, just in case I awaken one morning to find my skin tighter across my bones and my belly flat. How bonkers is that! I even hold on to dresses that have been the wrong fit for years and they hang as from a gallows tree all pretty and flouncy and empty of breath.

But it is hard to let go of them. Within those folds lie memories of what was, of who I was, once when the carefree in me sang in a higher key; when the crone didn’t huddle in a wrinkled corner, beckoning. But they are cuckoos now, these frocks and swingle skirts and they aren’t the only ones holding those memories. Jeans, boots, tops and froufrou; halter necks, strapless, slim-lined, tight-waisted – for family weddings, parties, dances, ceilidhs, stage events at book festivals, I will remember you when you are gone, all by myself.

I take a big bag upstairs and begin. There are button boots with cuban heels still in their boxes, worn once, maybe twice; there is a sparkly sequinned sheath bought years ago in a Glasgow shop, electric blue and minus a few sequins now and a sheath. A sheath. I will never ever wear a sheath again. Inside that wardrobe hangs my past. In the depths of the dark they call for their release, like long-term prisoners from a cell and it is I who am their jailor. I have no idea if anyone will find them, eyes ablaze with excitement, pull them off the rack and take them home, but what I do know is that I need to let them go, for them to breathe new air, to adorn, possibly, a younger body, one inhabiting the carefree, careless of the lack of sequins.

It thinks me. Not just of clothes but of life as a whole. Letting go is being open. It is also being vulnerable. If my wardrobe stands empty, what then? What if I am invited to something swish, some event that requires a dress, or a pair of button boots and all I have to hand are wider frocks and flat plimsolls? Will I still go? Having little or mostly no access to shops I cannot replace any of them short term. Besides, I loathe shopping with a vengeance. I can go into a dress shop and be overwhelmed within 3 paces, so overwhelmed that all I see is a blur of colour and rack upon rack of 25 dresses all in the same style but in different sizes. I run for Costa.

Letting go of old things, old ways of being, old beliefs that birthed when I was young and carefree, and are now quite obsolete, is not easy. But….This is what I believe. This is what I think. This is how I do this. If I let go of any of these, what do I replace them with? Well, replies my inner guru, Nothing. You just wait patiently for something else to come in, something new and right for Now. But, I am not patient, I snap at her. I want things to be there when I need them, people too, help and support and more carpet cleaner. She only smiles. I can feel the warmth of it and I know our conversation is done.

When life feels like a wobbly back tooth I can panic. I can think I am all alone in the world, the Only Weirdo at 67, the one whose insecurities are alive and kicking and whose self-doubt is as fat and magnificent as the Taj Mahal only without the bejewelment. But (and there is always one of those) when I sit and talk with other women of my age, even if their lives are markedly different to my own, I hear the weirdo in them too. They confess their own insecurities and those insecurities rhyme with mine, they harmonise, they match. It seems we all feel these things and I am mindful of the arrogance that thought me I was the Only One. What changes me are these encounters, these shared laughs about missing sequins and memories hiding in the folds. They also have held on as if youth might return one day with her confidence and her wahoo and her carefree danceability.

We agree, this Other Weirdo and I that she is not gone; nor is she beaten into submission; nor is she dead on the gallows, empty of breath. She has quietened down, yes, she has felt foolish and turned in, but she has something within her that has replaced her trust in the world. Trust in herself. Yes, it’s like a toddler learning to walk, this trust, but it has potential, even now, even when life has bashed and scarred with all that is thrown the way of every one of us.

In the light of this knowledge I am inspired to greater heights. If I think, just once, that keeping ‘this’ will bring back my vim and vigour, it has to go because I am not trusting in myself if I hold on to the old. Not just clothes but old beliefs, old ways of doing things, old lies. I will no longer pick through the rubble of what once stood four-wall-tall. I will gather the bits I can carry and make a path.

A path into whatever comes next.