The Dating Pool: Chubby Grandma Edition
MWC Reentry
I don’t really know what to do about my eyebrows. They are as spindly and thin as I feel, despite this version of the chubbily-single me. Dating profile: Chubby grandma here. I don’t know what I am doing out here again. The fish are frightening and some of them look really old.
The bathroom mirror is turning into a Plath-like experience; my aged face rising up out of that silvery pool, a dead fish I cannot deny. What has happened to my teeth? There are brownish spots where my confident smile used to be. Lipstick seems to make it all worse.
The time has slipped right on by as the collagen has packed up and left my face. Abundant fat cells have set up camp in my lower abdomen and they have no plans of moving. I now walk with a little side-limp motion that’s surely not my yester-year mating dance. Has it really been almost eleven years?
There’s no consolation prize for spending a decade chasing after a doomed relationship. Your reward is eventually your freedom, but you get a new body to debutante your way back into society; stretchy yoga pants where your skinny jeans used to be. If you’re lucky, your dignity in a shoulder bag, intact, and ready for reassignment.
Operation: Reentry.
Goal: Don’t be stupid.
First stop was Mom’s spare room. I left dignity packed in that shoulder bag and stuck it right in the back of the closet. I had no use for it for the first few months. Those days and nights were more suitable for tissues and the occasional tree-hugging meltdown. I spent a lot of time wandering in the dark. No, not metaphorically — I literally mean wandering in the dark, at night, while the world slept. I tried to make my peace with the stars.
The days were equally as long. I’ve always heard that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. But I didn’t have a single lemon and fuck lemonade. I really hate that stuff.
The hair was the first to go, during a middle-of-the-night pacing event. Somehow each close of the scissors gave me strength. Waist-length to chin- length in a matter of minutes. Who says empowerment has to be beautiful? Fuck beauty too. Who needs it?
A funny thing happens when you’ve nowhere to go but up. You grapple and climb and scrape and if you’re lucky, fly. You dig deep and find the ugly, brute strength that takes you places you never knew were waiting for you. It feels a bit like those wandering nights in the woods when the sounds around you could be anything and the scream of a fox is so close by that your anxiety can taste it.
I got my wings in January, in the form of a shitty apartment with my name on the lease. Turns out, you can make a living writing. Good thing, too, because dignity wasn’t going to pay for it all. The new furniture looked great. I went with different colors, ones that wouldn’t remind me of my previous life. I left so much behind that making everything new became a bit of an obsession. Now, the days are all mine and I do with them whatever I please. Dignity now has a place to reside and I find she makes excellent company.
When I look now in the mirror at that worn-out face it doesn’t match all the power I feel on the inside. That raging, kicking, and screaming strength. I earned the hell out of it. I make no apologies anymore for my imperfections, or my appearance, now made less glamorous by the years gone by. I remember the me I used to see; her wild hair and passionate eyes — and I feel her trapped inside of there, buried under the skin of age and time. It’s ok. As long as I know she’s there.
Being single again is different when your hair’s turned gray and the “body type” box you have to tick is two boxes in the heavier direction. Not that I’m really looking or anything — but it feels good to know I have options. Or, at least I thought I had options. One guy from my past was excited to see my face cross his potential dating pool. He sent me a video of himself reading poetry. We had a great few messages until I returned a video of myself just saying hello or something casual. After he viewed the video there were a few more brief replies — then crickets. That was our last communication. The message was pretty clear — I no longer looked like the girl he used to know.
That gut-punch of reality weirdly excited me. It was a new beginning of seeing myself more clearly in this new reality of mine. Not defined by the shallowness of a man, but by the bravery with which I rose to that occasion. That vast and frightening sea transformed from a quiet mirrored surface waiting to swallow me down into the cold — into a wide horizon with many directions. My life felt endless with possibilities.
Like one of those silly choose-your-own-adventure books I read when I was a kid. You remember those, right? Turn to page 77 if you want to tell this guy to get lost. Turn to page 79 if you decide to sit and cry in a glass of wine. Yes, wine, this is my own adventure and I make the rules here.
And you can get lost, sir.
Because the older I get the bolder I get. And my beauty is no longer your concern. Anyone’s concern. Not really even my own concern. Give me the wild-haired mornings. Give me the unshaved legs if I want them. Give me the quiet of my cell phone and the emptiness of tomorrow’s calendar. I’ll take loneliness any day over a dating requirement to pack my dignity away.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a great big world out there and I’d like to take my place in it. I think I’ll start with hitting the pool. It’s nice out today and I like how the cool water tickles in my curls. I like the sun on my skin. My new freedom-skin. Imperfectly, beautifully mine.
Thank you for reading my entry to the Medium Writer’s Contest. (Subject: Re-entry).
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