The Power of Orange Knickers
Okay, so I know this is a book blog, but life is beautifully complicated, and sometimes I need to talk about things other than books! So, I’m introducing the first of Zelda’s Musings, inspired by Kitty Thomas, an author that I recently discovered and fell in love with (see my review of her debut novel Comfort Food).
Kitty posted an entry on her blog today titled “We’re All Different” about a book she recently re-read titled How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World. Kitty’s musings, as always, were extremely poignant and got me thinking about my own experiences with personal freedom and my own journey to self-awareness. I, myself, have spent the last two decades of my life consciously and continually reinventing myself to deal with one social requirement or another.To be honest, I can’t even tell you if there was a specific reason or trigger that set me on this course, other than the fact that it was a game — a challenge to myself to test the chains of society (be it in high school, college, my friends, family or career, etc.) and prove that they can be broken and rebuilt.
Most people go through a bit of social experimentation in their teen years as they grow and try to figure out who they are as human beings. I am no different, except that I began doing so in a very calculated way early-on — likely the result of an overactive imagination and too much reading! I was a surprisingly self-aware child. In middle-school, I was in the gifted program and hated that it made me a social outcast, so I decided to renounce my intelligence (ha!) and walked away from the program and all of my old friends — a clean break, never to acknowledge them again — what now seems a totally cruel thing to do. In high school I took advantage of the fact that my family began to move around a lot — I eventually attended four different high schools — and reinvented myself each year, exploring different personalities and social interactions. As a freshman, I was a musician and began hanging with an older, more sexually-active crowd. As a sophomore, I was athletic, on the soccer team and dance squad, dating varsity athletes. As a junior, I went punk rock, attending raves and dabbling in drugs and alcohol. As a senior, I calmed down a bit and threw myself into theatre, taking lead actress roles and managing the improv troupe. By the time I hit college and my 20s, I had experimented with a bit of everything and, as a result, had a pretty good idea of who I was and who I wanted to be. I was personally happy. I met my husband and settled down. End of story?
It didn’t stop there. I was still restless. The desire to experiment with who I was and how I interacted with the world socially was still there, the only difference being that I now understood myself a lot better than I had in my teens, so any efforts at this point to recast myself were more like getting a new, elaborate paint job instead of tinkering around with what was under the hood. It began as an effort to fit in, became an effort to discover myself, and was now an effort to maximize the experience of life itself. It makes me wonder if my efforts may never really have been about finding myself, although that has happened along the way, but about the act of social experimentation itself, testing my own freedoms in a world built on expectations and statistical averages. What these efforts have done is enable me to capitalize on those expectations — to twist the bindings of those “philosophical ‘truths’ that are commonly accepted and acted upon” into tools of exploration.
I would guess that the story is far from over, and will continue as long as I perceive there are locks to pick and bindings to escape. Perhaps there will come a time — is it now? — that I will grow weary of playing games and settle into myself once and for all. That being said, there is some undeniable allure to the mystery and complication of it all. The science of how to compartmentalize various aspects of life, on how to live out certain dreams and aspirations without limiting oneself based on the decisions made in another walk of life. In the end, it’s all about control, and how to bend and manipulate perception to meet certain needs and desires — of not allowing oneself to become tied down by the restrictions of societal mores. To me, that is my freedom.
I find myself continually going back to words from a beautiful song by Tori Amos, on which it seems that I live my life… “the power of orange knickers / under my petticoat / the power of listening to what / you don’t want me to know.” I’d like to think that I’m always wearing orange knickers under my power-suits (or whatever petticoats I happen to be wearing on any particular day) — preferably sheer orange knickers with little ruffles on the ass…
Zelda Gillian is a wife, a mother and a lover, likes strong espresso, stiff corsets and never strays far from her Kindle.
Yeah, those are totally hot panties! I think I’m a new fan of orange!
Anyway, thank you so much for writing this post. It made me think about this in a whole new way.
I think one of the biggest challenges for me is that other people say “people don’t change”. And once someone has a certain expectation about who you are, that seems to be “locked in.”
I find your journey utterly fascinating and wish I could have been that self-aware in high school, or even now. Because it took this blog post to sort of drop this epiphany on my head… that I can be whoever I choose to be.
If I choose to experiment with a different way of socially interacting and trying on different ways of being, it doesn’t matter if someone else thinks that’s “not really me” because “of course” through limited interaction they really “know” me (sarcasm.)
With reading the Harry Browne book again… (and I’m far from finished re-reading), I’m in this place in my life emotionally where I want to take full control over who I am.
I don’t want to be so easily swayable (is that a word? Spell check says it isn’t), by my emotions, or other people, or any of it.
The thirties they say is when a woman fully comes into her own, and I’m definitely counting on that to happen, but… I have to do part of it myself.
And so thank you for writing this post. Because I think, even as I was going through these thoughts of mine that the big point of focus was on not letting anyone else define me… but I wasn’t coming from it from this angle of the acceptance that I can be who I choose to me. There is nothing “making” me be any certain way.
I was putting limitations on my self… like… I had some fixed point of where I could go from here. But I think that may be another one of those false constructs that entraps people. (I think you will LOVE the “How I Found Freedom…” book, btw!)
So this was one of those posts that sort of woke me up to the possibility that *I* will define me, and other people will just have opinions from limited knowledge. Some of those opinions will be from people who think highly of me, some of them won’t but at the end of the day, no one human being’s value judgment of me is worth anymore than anyone else’s… except maybe M’s. But ultimately the value judgment that matters most is my own.
And sorry, I think I turned this into a novel!
Thank you for sharing so much of yourself. I get a lot of what you are saying. I look back at my life in HS and college and wish that I had been more assertive with my self-image and self-discovery. But all of the events I went through helped shape me as the person I am today. And I love me. Sure, I’m not happy with my weight and I could use some better time management skills, I worry about my parenting skills, etc. but I’m me and I’m happy to discover where I will go. Good luck on your journey!
@kitty_thomas – I know where you’re coming from, for sure! The way I see it, who gives a fuck what anyone else thinks or says at this point, right? The 30s are the best years of our lives. We no longer have to prove ourselves to anyone and we’re generally settled and more sure of who we are.
It seems I talk to people everyday who are disappointed in their lives and in the decisions they’ve made. I certainly don’t want to wake up one day 20-30 years from now and have regrets. It’s my life, and I am in control of my own happiness. And, so what if I screw up along the way or take an unusual path to get there? At least it will have been my doing, and in the end, it’s all part of the experience and the journey…
Yeesh… I’m sounding all self-helpy! ;) But, I do think I will check out the book. Thank you for the inspiration! I hadn’t really given a lot of thought to this before!
@Twimom – Thanks! I totally agree with you. Despite all of this, I still have my skeletons, too… weight(and chocolate avoidance), working-mom guilt (does this ever go away?), money management (what money?), my now-4-years in grad school that feels like it might never end, etc. etc. But, I figure, all of those things are at least things that I can change — things that I have control over. That’s freedom in itself! :)
No problem! :)
And wow, I looked like I was replying to myself. I figured the comment would post below yours. LOL (And of course THIS will look like I’m replying to myself also. LOL)
Ha… I think I need to tweak that in my coding somewhere… Sorry!
I just stumbled onto your blog and I found this post really inspiring! So I just wanted to say thank you! I’ve always just been paler version of ‘me’ because it’s been my comfort zone and because I’ve always been a good girl but this year has been really awful and hard for me and realised I should maybe try and push my comfort zone more. So erm thank you!
Off to go check out more of your blog… :)
@Ally – Thank you for your comments! I’m sorry to hear that you’ve had a rough year and am glad that I could offer some inspiration! *hugs*
I will say that I don’t think you are alone in defaulting to your comfort zone at all… it’s human nature to take the path of least resistance! But it bothers me to think that I could wake up one day to realize that I’m just a shadow of the world around me… instead, I need to take control of my own self and my own destiny. I need to not be afraid to be different than others and not be ashamed of who I am. It’s actually a very difficult and scary thing to do sometimes, and I still face my own demons on a daily basis. ;)
It’s funny, this was my first “real life” post on my blog and I’m thinking that perhaps I should start writing more about “real life” instead of hiding behind my fiction all the time… so thanks to you, too, for giving me some inspiration! :)
Good luck to you in finding your color… and, above all else, don’t be afraid to have fun and be a little naughty now and again! Naughty girls DO have more fun, after all…