I want to be beautiful at 53. I want to have long hair with streaks of silver running through the brown. I want to look wise and wear blue rock jewelry and have great art hanging from my walls, thick singing melodies from the stereo, and candles and fresh bread everyday. I want to be someone people seek out to talk to - a listener who hands them a warm cup of tea with worn leathery hands and sits on the porch wrapped in a blanket as they unload and laugh and trust as we swing back and forth and let our feet dangle. I want to feel beautiful – full of bear hugs, homemade cookies and mornings in the country with a garden growing zucchini. I want the lines around my eyes to be accentuated when I laugh - to tell of years of growing pains as I embrace the genuine that comes with beginning "old". How does someone like me get to be someone like that? How does a New Yorker who never makes time to call just to say hi or even entertain the thought of interrupting the practicing to ask my roommate how she is – how do I, so ungrounded, racing frantically from one train to the next, become wise and centered?
I look at her and I think "she's beautiful". But she wouldn't be a lingerie model. Does that mean I don't need to feel gorgeous everyday? Because I'm the one that looks in the mirror fifty times and always leaves with a dark cloud filling my mind. Do I ever feel "good enough" - do I ever have enough love? I'm a tangled mess of expectations and self-criticism with an uncanny talent for disapproval of my everything’s. The voice in my head jibbers all day long - always "not enough, Not Enough." And I don't want to care anymore if I feel beautiful or skinny or tan. Why do I allow this black out in my mind - when really the people I see and think are beautiful are none of these things?
God, make me more than I am. Clean this mind that gets so caught up and confused. Help me see me how you see me.