Shopping As Exercise

The best part about turning thirty-two last year is that I began to feel more comfortable in my own skin. I was told my thirties would be a "golden time" and considered it to be true. More mature than ever, responsible, hard-working, a dependable person with grown-up goals, ideas and achievements - not to mention I would be reaching my sexual peak soon. I finally got to that place at which we see ourselves when we are REALLY grown up - when I was 18, I knew exactly how my life would be when I turned 30. And here I finally am, just 15 years later.

Of course, all of this is a load of crap. True, I have the outward trappings of an adult, but trying to justify to my mother and friends a somewhat recent and sudden urge to become a teenage girl again has been difficult, to say the least. Now is the time I should be planning for my future, shopping for a prospective mate. Not running around all weekend (or all hours of the night, my favorite phrase Mom loves to throw at me) or shopping for shoes. Never mind that I have to hold down a full-time job in addition to any writing I do, never mind that I have a chronically ill Min Pin with an attitude problem and a penchant for eating things that require stomach pumping. Never mind that I have a house to care for, a mortgage payment and car loan. I am thrown back into the overloaded hormonal frenzy of my youth.

Well, not really.

When I was fourteen, yes I wore makeup and was obsessed with boys. I passed notes in school and even had a Slam Book or two (which dates me, I know). Pizza and slumber parties on the weekend, football games at night. Staring at a phone for hours because he said he would call. I had mood swings, I hated my parents. I swore because I thought it made me look grown-up. I did all the things I was supposed to do. Then came fifteen.

It was like an overnight change - from clothing/hair-obsessed to not really caring one way or another. I went through several years of not really following any one "look" - just buying things because I liked them and never giving it a second thought. This I did until last year - I rarely bought anything besides clothes for work, and then, only "suitable" clothes. Nothing "fun". No clothes for a hot date or a Girls' Night Out. I don't think I accessorized until the age of 32 (and I certainly wouldn't have used it as a verb until then). What you saw is simply what you got.

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