Better than a Gucci watch: the three things I really want for my 55th birthday.
Dear you,
What is the best birthday gift you have ever received?
I was going through my jewellery the other day and came across this Gucci watch that I’d forgotten about. It was a gift, if you can believe it, from my high school boyfriend! I wish, for the sake of this story, that I could recall the fine details, but sadly, too much time has passed, and all I can remember are vague impressions of this experience.
I recall being completely blown away! Who gets a Gucci watch from their boyfriend at 16?!? Not to mention that my boyfriend was the hottest guy in the school. A point that I have NOT forgotten, and LOVE to ham up any chance I get. Yup, I dated the hottest guy in high school. He was tall, dark, charming, and so kind (he still is). The “it” guy. The one the girls drooled over and wanted, but for some crazy reason, he picked me!
Being asian in the 80’s was like being practically invisible to the boys. Barely a person - more like teenager dust. And especially invisible to the boys (Unless they had some weird Asian fetish - I steered clear of them cause I may as well be teenager dust to them too. Hot Asian teenager dust is just as dusty.)
So you can imagine how thrilling it would have been for me to strut around Richmond Hill High, on the arm of the hottest guy in school, AND to receive this over-the-top Gucci watch, which I of course coveted and flashed around for all to see, as if to say - not so invisible now bitches! And while, admittedly, all this felt glorious at the time, and gives me endless delight to still brag about, 44 years later, a Gucci watch can not make up for a fundamental sense of not belonging. Of feeling fearfully unsafe in the world.
I’m turning 55 today. I feel like, if there was a theme to my 50’s it’d be, “jig’s up!” And that I can no longer lie to myself. These gaps, these gaping holes of longing and needing. It’s as if some switch was flipped in my 50s and I just can’t bear to cover over these gaping needs with dollar bills, dazzling things, or even a super hot boyfriend. It’s as if, whatever the cost and pain of being honest with myself, I just gotta go there. I can no longer tolerate pretending that these things hold the doors of belonging open. (Not that there’s anything wrong with ANY of this! Not that there is anything wrong with the choices we make to stitch and duct tape a sense of belonging in the world.)
So here I am, at 55. The midpoint of my 50s. It’s been wild! Scary! But I gotta say, without a doubt, it’s been by far the most exciting decade of my adult life.
At the beginning of this year, I’d made a commitment to write my face off. To follow through on this incredible desire to write and tell stories all the time. Which was going great, until it wasn’t. And I just could not keep going. My blogs were papering over that gaping hole.
That in the very moment I look up, and out at the world, with the intention of putting myself out there, I am utterly overcome by terror. And I’ve been very creative about ways to override this (let’s bookmark that - the ways we override our fears).
Dripping desire and horrifying terror, side by side. Taking up residence in the depths of my belly. This is the truth.
What is the gift I want now? At 55.
My good friend has a young daughter, and one day I saw her looking around the coffee shop. Her eyes beautifully, curiously, dancing around the space. And I’d said to her, that I love the way your eyes move. I love the way you take in the world. What I would have given if someone had said this to me, too.
That I had a special way of seeing the world. That my eyes dance. They go wide and long, soft or cutting, they can dart and laser in tight, or slowly curve round the shape of all the things. One eye in, one eye out. The shape of the story unfolding in all directions. That my eyes are wild, and game for adventure. They feel the truth and the story behind the story. Peering into the smallest, most unappealing cracks that most would ignore, and hone in on what is alive there and begging to be seen.
Re-arriving. Bewildered and complete. At 55.
I feel as if, had someone, anyone, said to me as a young person, 'I love the way your eyes move,' I might have had the courage to then bring that vision out into the world. That somehow the connection between my eyes and my mouth to speak to the things I see would have been stronger and more integrated.
At 55, these are the three things I gift myself with:
To covet my own eyeballs. To love the way they move. And to let them rest and reside in the socket of this coveting and love.
To slow down and honour that I have this terror, that lives side by side with desire. To try not to override or cover over this place in an attempt to find belonging in the world.
To trust - that there is artistry here. Beyond artistry. This knowing that when we reach into the furthest, darkest depths of our own wilderness, something so wild arises that it dismantles and redefines artistry itself. Busts open the unseen rigidities, dissolves the translucent sinew that bonds us to our own colonization, and creates new worlds that hold a greater sense of belonging. This place where my eyes connect into my mouth, and I utter, and utter, and utter …
Way better than a Gucci watch.
Dear you, thank you for celebrating my 55th with me.
The way we each see the world is precious.
I hold you dearly. In all this.
Dodie 🩶