Roadtrip Wednesday: LIKE MANDARIN!
In honor of the release of Kirsten Hubbard's debut LIKE MANDARIN, YA Highway is putting themselves into Grace's shoes for a while. Grace would give anything to be like Mandarin...but what about the rest of us?
To answer this topic, I'm going to have to take you back in time with a series of embarrassing melodramatic flashbacks. Ready, set...
FLASH.
It's 2004, and I step into a public high school for the first time. After five years of private schooling and three years of home schooling, even our town's tiny high school seems overwhelming. I'm wearing something that I feel is stylish, even though I have no concept of style as the world defines it. My heart is pounding so loud that I'm sure everyone can hear it, just as I'm sure everyone can see my sweaty pits and shaking hands. But as it turns out, no one sees me at all. I spend most of the day sitting alone, staying quiet, and feeling invisible.
FLASH.
The next four years are spent wrestling with the desire to be noticed and the desire to remain in the background. Sure, I make friends. Sure, every now and then I go with my gut and give that speech/presentation/monologue that is risky and controversial and puts me in the spotlight for a few minutes. But even after I graduate, I still struggle with these two people living inside me. Do I want to be seen, or do I want to be invisible?
So...who did I idolize in high school? Who was the person for whom I would have sold my soul in exchange for friendship?
I'm not sure if there was one individual, but I do remember being in awe of those girls who were effortlessly graceful; who knew who they were but didn't have to flaunt it; who could wear baggy boys' jeans one day and a feathery lace dress the next. They didn't fit a label or a mold - they created their own. They just WERE, and somehow it was enough.
When I got into college, I started experimenting with this new, label-less way of living. I tried to stop thinking of myself as someone who had to either disappear or revel in the spotlight. I let myself be occasionally loud and goofy and outrageous; I let myself take two days to write and read and be alone.
And now, when I look back on my scared skinny fourteen-year-old self, I'm startled to realize that the person that girl probably would have idolized in high school...is me.
Not that I'm perfect. Not that I see myself as a role model for fourteen-year-old girls everywhere. But as far as learning to be comfortable in my own skin, I think I'm finally getting the hang of it.
Took me long enough.