That's Just The Way It Is, Some Things'll Never Change, That's Just The Way It Is, Ha, But Don't You Believe Them

--"The Way It Is", Bruce Hornsby

When I was younger people used to identify by four trademarks. One, I would always wear a bow in my hair. From the age of two to about eight you can hardly find one photograph of me without one in my hair. It wasn't a conscious choice. My mother started me on the regiment from an early age and, after that, it sorta became my thing. It certainly wasn't anything I remember fighting against until I was eight, you know? Bows were part of my morning routine as much as brushing my teeth was. Two, coinciding with that, people could always tell me by my chestnut brown hair. Hell's bells, it ain't like I had the color trademarked or anything, but folks were forever remarking what a unique shade of brown it was. Aside from my mother, nobody had ever seen its counterpart, if these folks were to be believed. Three, folks could not resist commenting on my oceanic blue-green eyes. Granted, I do believe my eyes are pretty. They're one of the features I love best about myself, but the way everyone would talk it was like seeing the image of Jesus beneath my eyelids. Lastly, of any physical attribute I possessed my dimples were the ones that got remarked about the most. Whether it was to squeeze them, or ask me to show them off, or to plain ooh and ahh, my dimples were my signature feature if I were to have just one.

It's flattering to be thought of as comely, as being worthy of someone's gaze, but as my daddy says, "Nobody ever asked a flower for its opinion." There came a point where I felt like all I was was the sum of my collective body parts. It didn't matter what I felt or thought; nobody ever asked me to show those off. Nope, all they wanted to see was, well, what they could see.

That's when I started writing. I started writing about how trapped I felt behind this costume that I couldn't take off. I started writing about how all I wanted to do was find the person beneath the layers. I started writing about how I worried once my beauty faded people might found out that they didn't want me around at all.

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The Flower Fading - Breanne Holins

Through these blue-green eyes of mine
(Like the ocean anywhere but near the U.S.)
I saw a flower fading
Its color dulling into nothingness
And I thought how I'd never wish a fate like
A fate like this on anyone
What in youth was fragrant and full of verve
Now woefully limps over, head hung in shame
I tossed my chestnut curls in the same bows
But somehow I felt glad I had someone
Someone who still cared to bother with bows
Unlike this poor flower
This poor, poor flower
(How ever like so many individuals)
It lives in such bittersweet agony
Forgotten, forsaken, and forlorn
And like a bullet through the brain
I softly pluck it from its stem
And toss it to the winds above
Oh, if only our lives were so easy to decide
Given the choice to go
Or fade away
Few would be the lips pausing in response
(June 26th, 1994)

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Now that I've reached that age where I'm beginning to resemble the flower fading, where it isn't about noticing my face growing more full of life, but watching it slowly shift into maturity, I'm beginning to become the prophecy fulfilled. Someone recently asked me if I regret being so adamant people take me seriously for only my mind and my philosophies, that maybe I wished I had just enjoyed being thought of as a great beauty a little more. I replied that it wasn't like I never took advantage of my natural wattage. I can only be myself after all--no more, no less. There were many days where I had a hoot-and-a-half courtesy of some poor 'ole fools rapt attention on my physical appearance. As to whether I thought I downplayed my looks when I should have been coasting by on them, maybe, yeah, I could have had a little more fun with it. But on the whole, I'm rather proud of myself for being the kind of person whose stock and trade isn't how people perceive her. I take pride in my stock and trade being how I present myself, in the way I act and carry myself.

Because, you know what? I don't wear bows in my hair any more, I've changed my hair color more than once, and you can find me at home in a pair of reading glasses as out I am out of them. About the only thing I haven't been able to cover up or hide are my dimples. Sometimes I reckon that's the small piece of me at six, at twelve, at eighteen, that I carry with me. And that's a good thing because even though far less people think it's cute of me to have dimples upon my cheeks, far more of me remembers the girl who thought it was utterly magical that I had these distinguishing features that only showed themselves when I smiled. It was like my little gift to the world, shy and sweet at the time. You had to coax it out of me. But once you got them to reveal themselves it was very difficult of me to hide them away again.

So, yeah, I may be the flower fading soon if not already, but I know there's a small part of me that time and change can't take away from me. Because, hell's bells, on most days if you're nice to me and you put me in a good mood, you too can see a bit of the face of that certain bows-in-her-chestnut-brown-hair-and-stars-in-her-eyes girl I was in the eighties and early nineties. She'll never fade away. She can't--not while these dimples still wait in patient repose beneath my rosy cheeks.

Breanne