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Bigger than my body
Oct. 29th, 2003 01:40 pmI felt a cold start last night around 8--the telltale hot scratchiness in the back of my throat, the slight raise in body temperature and dizziness. They say that when you first start to feel a cold coming on, the first eight to twelve hours are crucial as far as rest and hydration. That was easy--I got nine hours of sleep, plus I drank hot, hot water with honey and took some vitamin C. They say that sipping very hot water every so often is better than drinking cup after cup of warm, and that you should maintain with cool, fresh water throughout the day. When I got to work, I immediately took my bottle of zinc gluconate, split one of the 100mg tablets in half and took it with tepid water mixed with a dash of salt. They say that zinc gluconate has been proven to help shorten the virus duration, even kill it. And if it's not a virus, I haven't done myself any harm by boosting my immune system.
I feel seventeen today. I've been feeling younger and younger lately. I look in the mirror and I see someone who never grew an inch since puberty at eleven, whose eyes may have absorbed the years but whose body and skin remain small and young. My voice may have gotten deeper, my breasts may be fuller and my sexuality powerfully ripe, but in all the ways that count, I am an eternal child. I always knew that my social and emotional maturity has severely lagged to the point that, right now, I should be seventeen. I'd be at the age where girls are at the edge of womanhood, making friends, so many friends. I don't feel my age at all. It's like I'm moving backwards. When I started college, I felt like I was starting high school. The friends I should have had in high school surround me now, when I am mere months from turning a quarter of a century old. My wonder at the world is still that of a child, frosted with the cynicism I have developed as a working, responsible adult. I feel like I am caught between worlds, as I have always been. People say that it's good to keep your mind young, but which youth do they mean--emotional, intellectual, mental or perceptive? When I turn thirty, will I still feel like I just graduated college? When I'm forty, will I feel the peak of a quarter-century instead of almost half? Why is my mind going backwards? Is it because I feel so content? That I have the quiet wisdom, trust and faith that all children have in a world that is beautiful on the outside but rotting and crumbling behind the veil? The man I love is three years from thirty, but looks and acts twenty-one--most of the time he falls all the way back to a child himself. Together, we can hold hands and stare bewildered at the world and its pain, pick flowers and comb each other's hair, and in the end come home and pay bills and fear politics.
Is this strange regression natural? Should I be worried? Or should I embrace the return to innocence for all it's worth and watch to see if those I love come meet me in this world between worlds?
I can only hope.
I feel seventeen today. I've been feeling younger and younger lately. I look in the mirror and I see someone who never grew an inch since puberty at eleven, whose eyes may have absorbed the years but whose body and skin remain small and young. My voice may have gotten deeper, my breasts may be fuller and my sexuality powerfully ripe, but in all the ways that count, I am an eternal child. I always knew that my social and emotional maturity has severely lagged to the point that, right now, I should be seventeen. I'd be at the age where girls are at the edge of womanhood, making friends, so many friends. I don't feel my age at all. It's like I'm moving backwards. When I started college, I felt like I was starting high school. The friends I should have had in high school surround me now, when I am mere months from turning a quarter of a century old. My wonder at the world is still that of a child, frosted with the cynicism I have developed as a working, responsible adult. I feel like I am caught between worlds, as I have always been. People say that it's good to keep your mind young, but which youth do they mean--emotional, intellectual, mental or perceptive? When I turn thirty, will I still feel like I just graduated college? When I'm forty, will I feel the peak of a quarter-century instead of almost half? Why is my mind going backwards? Is it because I feel so content? That I have the quiet wisdom, trust and faith that all children have in a world that is beautiful on the outside but rotting and crumbling behind the veil? The man I love is three years from thirty, but looks and acts twenty-one--most of the time he falls all the way back to a child himself. Together, we can hold hands and stare bewildered at the world and its pain, pick flowers and comb each other's hair, and in the end come home and pay bills and fear politics.
Is this strange regression natural? Should I be worried? Or should I embrace the return to innocence for all it's worth and watch to see if those I love come meet me in this world between worlds?
I can only hope.
