How did I get here?

I know you all expected a summer recap post, but that requires a lot more mental energy than I currently posses, so the Top 5 Best and Worst Moments of Summer 2011, as suggested by my friend J, will have to wait and I will start fleshing out ideas I squirreled away on my Blackberry all summer.

I can hardly believe this time last week I was reading and sunning myself on the beach (read: covered in 110 SPF, wearing my Yankee hat, chasing the shade around the umbrella), since I am already so immersed in Girl Scouts, PTA and all the other minutiae that runs my life. But, yes, not seven days ago, while counting the hours until classy-Solo-cup-cocktails-on-the-beach time I was reading a great book called What Alice Forgot.

The premise - a young woman wakes up on the floor of a spin class, to find she is a gym-obsessed, forty year-old mother of three, when her last memory is being a chocolate-loving, twenty-nine year-old, pregnant with her first child. The concept is really fascinating. She ten must go about living her new life with the perspective of her old (younger) one until her memory returns. During this time she sees her life, and the problems associated with it, with a whole new perspective. Think about yourself ten years ago. How different a person are you now? What has happened in those ten years, by your own doing or not, that has subtlety changed you on the deepest level? What would that younger you think of the older you you have become? And I don’t mean the choices you have made. I have gone on, ad nauseum, about how this was not the life I thought I would be leading many moons ago, but I mean the PERSON you have become living this life.

When I compare the “Marys” of 2001 and 2011, the contrast is sharp. Like the main character, Alice, I was also pregnant with my first child, and like Alice, was romantically dreaming about my baby, and eating everything I could get my hands on and not exercising in even the most rudimentary sense, to “protect” my unborn child. But even before I became pregnant, I could easily convince myself to skip the gym, or the laundry, or the grocery shopping to do something more important, like watch VH1’s I Love the 80’s. I was pretty easy on myself. Ten years later, it seems I have become my own taskmaster. Like Alice I am “tapping away on my mobile, jangling my car keys, ready to go, go go”. As Alice regains her memory, the voice of her older self starts to creep into her internal dialogue.

Lamenting about her lost memories the voice says:
‘Well, bad luck. Deal with it, honey. Have a shower. Time for coffee and an egg white omelette before the kids get up.’
The way this bossy, acerbic voice kept popping into her head was really freaking her out.
‘It’s hardly a matter of life and death, is it Alice?’
‘Oh, shut up’, she said back to her forty year-old self, ‘No offense, but you sound like a bit of a bitch, Alice.’

This is exactly the kind of internal dialogue my younger and older self have all the time, expect my older self always wins. Every morning twenty-seven year old Mary says, “Oh FUCK NO” , when the alarm goes off at five, and thirty-seven year old Mary barks, “Get up and get moving! Run, shower, pack those lunches you were too lazy to pack last night when you chose to watch The Bachlorette instead. Slacker.” When I have a cold and want to lie on the couch and watch bad, daytime television, Old Mary snarks, “Those dishes won’t wash themselves, dinner isn’t prepped yet, and what about those PTA emails you have to answer? No Say Yes to the Dress for you.” It’s like I’ve become that blonde asshole in Karate Kid, screaming at myself, “NO MERCY!!!!” with blonde bangs plastered against the vein popping out on my forehead.

In the book, the difference is so jarring between the two Alices, you hate forty-year old Alice and hope she never regains control. Her children like the mother who has forgotten about ballet and piano lessons and what constitutes a healthy meal. Her husband likes her more and they seem to have more fun. But at the same time, the laundry didn’t get done, and homework wasn’t turned in, and PTA projects Alice was running started to fall apart. Young Alice is fun, but can she keep a family running? The changes in Alice’s personality are almost a direct result of the life she is trying to create, and the question I ask is, is it entirely avoidable?

It was easy for me to be easier on myself when it was just myself I was affecting with my choices, like Cocoa Puffs for dinner. But now with three (sometimes four) people to look out for, I often feel I can’t let my guard down, or when I do, I spend so much time digging out of the hole I’ve created (like when you go to the beach for a week and refuse to answer any PTA or Girls Scout emails on your Blackberry), it hardly seems worth it (OK, the week at the beach was). I often think of a quote from The Story of Us, where the husband asks the wife where to goofball he married went. Her response? “Where is the girl in the pith helmet? You beat her out of me!”

I do not disown my own role in this situation, and think anyone but myself beat the girl in the pith helmet out of me, and this is why I was so moved by this book. Stepping back and seeing how my life and the way I run it has altered my thoughts and perception of myself was kind of shocking. It was a “how did I get here?” kind of moment. There are benefits to the way I am now, significantly less back fat*, and drawbacks, significantly less relaxation, and I need to find a balance between the two.

Maybe for you, your two selves are not that different, or maybe they differ in good ways, but I think no matter what, this is sort of an interesting exercise we should all partake in every ten years. We should all take some time to remember how the world didn’t end when you decided to slack off for the day, and maybe be inspired to eat cereal for dinner while watching Mo Rocca riff on Hypercolor tshirts.

*I had quite the roll of it after birthing #2. H tried to make me laugh by telling me I was not starring in the Ron Howard movie “Backfat”. But, seriously, I hand handles back there.