what do you do when you think you look a bit like a boy?

i carry my tea cup out onto my deck. away from noise, demands, life. i sit alone. i listen to my neighbours talk of plants in the next garden. i hear the wind in the trees. my hand covers the left side of my face, my head is bowed. i realise that i have missed my strawberries ripening. i amuse myself at how some of the berries are red and their stalks green but some of the berries are green and their stalks red, i wonder how does that happen and marvel at the perfect symmetry of it. i am fighting with myself now. fighting tears. this is not the first time this has happened. it's not the first time i have come back from a hairdressers and not liked the result.

i think of all that overwhelms me. my thoughts whirl into a ball of confusion. the daily mundane wrapped up with a bow serving to strangle my bigger picture view.  and that ribbon is yellow. reminding me of all that i see myself as not being good at. of all i see myself failing at. or stuck with. or unable to change. and that bow is not a pretty one perched atop a present it's a restraining tie around my neck shortening my intake of breath.

and breathing is what i do now. i look again at the strawberries. the plants i planted last year; they grew sucker plants, they grew root systems, they hung out of their pots until weeks later i covered them in soil in another pot and cut the umbilical cord. they didn't die, they thrived and after months of looking like nothing was happening, they grew through the composted leaves atop them and flowered, producing fruit. their work done, they hand over their ripening to the warmth of the summer sun. i pick a glistening red berry and bite into its ripe juicy flesh, my tastebuds transporting me to summers past. i throw the husk back into the pot. it will decay down into the soil i think.  with that action i think about all that is unpalatable, all that i see as a waste or unwanted be it time or life or spoilt fruit. all of those experiences they compost down into your soul and become part of you. 

if you let them.

and i think of the words just spoken to me "your hair looks nice"and "you don't look like a boy" and my answers "does it?" and "don't i?" i think of how easily a view can become askewed, especially of myself. i wonder how much of myself i view through a mirror? how much value do i place on what i can see versus what i can't? 

i remember i am trying to learn to not always react to and make decisions by my first feeling. i remind myself that it is alright to be a work in progress, growing up and through lifes overgrowth. i recall space and time aforded to that growth and how the sunshine of words from those more experienced than i can assist me in visualsing who i am in my bigger picture. i breathe that in. because just like hair that i think has been cut too short we all continually grow and what is a short crop of a blip today can become a ponytail of a life lesson for tomorrow.

Emma

linking with emily at imperfect prose