September 16, 2009

• Slow Roasted

  I can't help but feel like a glass of fine wine, or a bit like a rotisserie chicken roasting in an oven. Food analogies aside (I haven't had breakfast yet) I feel like I'm getting better, like the more time passes I'm getting more and more savory, smarter, stronger (browner?).

  It has taken some time for me to truly revel in being single. After my (not very publicized) breakup with a boyfriend of five years I felt less than, faulty. Like there was a fundamental thing that was wrong with me, and would remain faulty until otherwise noted. I didn't realize that during those months afterward, today even, I've been slow roasted, changing slowly but into something delicious. People are all faulty in some sense yes, but we grow and shift and change and sometimes its magnificent to watch what happens. When I moved to the U.S. 13 years ago (good Lord, getting sorta old) I was 12 years old, tall-ish, skinny and awkward (physically and emotionally). I'm as tall as I'll ever get, no longer skinny (not that adolescent finding the right fit for your body sort of skinny) and only occasionally awkward (endearingly so). One of my aunts, who still lives in the Caribbean, saw a picture a few months ago of me and my younger sister on facebook. She knows we have grown, as people logically do, but probably still associates us with these children
   
  (that's my older brother in the middle, me on the right and my younger sister on the left).

  

  This is (more or less) what my sister and I look like now  (notice she's taller now. Sucks.) My aunt commented "Look how big them girls gettin'!" (paraphrasing of her Trini accent). Indeed. We are (all three of us, my brother, sister and I) "gettin' big." We're adults, all with very real concerns etc. But we're growing, and it's a wonderful wonderful feeling.

  • 12:02 pm
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