One of the cool kids

The exhausting pursuit of coolness aka acceptance and love

I remember looking up a lot as a child. 

Outside of my therapist’s office at 9 years old after one of the many unfortunate times I thought cutting all my hair off would lighten me.

Looking up to my three brothers–a redwood forest of jeans and cigarette smoke. Their laughter booming above my head like thunder. I remember looking up to my beautiful sister, with her perfectly coiffed blonde hair, and her not so perfect boyfriends.

There was the attempt to literally make my neck longer, as I struggled to be seen by the adults above me. There was also the metaphoric longing–the adoration. My siblings were so cool to me. They loved me, but I never felt fully a part of their crew. How could I? I was eight when most were starting college. I was still playing with Barbies, while my brothers were out breaking hearts.

My blockish legs couldn’t keep up when we went anywhere as a group. I have so many clear memories of people’s backs. I could still tell you about the shape of their haircut or the waistline of someone’s leather bomber jacket. My son panics whenever his dad races ahead and I can viscerally understand his longing. 

Longing implies a distance, a gap. It means you're behind. You’re never caught up. You’re never quite there.

I loathed elementary school. 

The spring uniforms we wore looked like Easter-colored potato sacks, especially on me and my round, ever-expanding body. How did the cool girls still manage to look cute? How were their legs just stacks of long bones where my thighs spilled over and stuck to the hard plastic chairs?

One day, we were out at the yard for recess and a teacher mistakenly called one of them Sarah. This girl was so appalled she could have vomited. The disgust on her face still haunts me to this day. What was so offensive about looking like me?

I hated myself so vehemently. Now all I see is beauty and some super cool shades.

Personally, I took the mistake as a compliment. If I look like the cool girls then maybe I can finally be cool. Maybe I can finally catch up.

But what makes someone cool? 

It must be how attractive and skinny they are. That’s what all the gossip rags screamed at me in the checkout line at the grocery store. That’s what my mom was inadvertently telling me every time she had cosmetic surgery or started another fad diet.

I started studying women’s magazines with the same intensity that a doctoral student would research their dissertation. I watched how the celebrities that my father constantly surrounded himself by walked and talked. I memorized television shows and movies. The thread seemed to be an air of lightness. A floating quality. I was hardly a gazelle, I felt like an elephant.

Even with the speed-laced diet pills, even with the meal replacement shakes, and weight loss camps, even with the deep, heart-breaking longing of a little girl who just wanted to be seen, I still couldn’t seem to reach that pinnacle of cool.

I just felt separate. Muffled. Behind. Stuffed into too-tight plaid winter skirts that cut my waist like a knife. Stuffed into this elementary school chair where I was scolded to be quiet and sit still, when all I wanted to do was move and feel free.

My mom told me that Renee Russo was an “ugly duckling” as a child who grew up to be beautiful. I took her to mean there was hope for me.

We were watching Get Shorty at our local theater. The maroon stadium seats were always uncomfortable and I would squirm the entire film, sliding forward and back. Tipping the seat bottom up toward my knees and loudly slamming it back down. It bothered the people around us. Even strangers were annoyed by my large presence.

A friend of my parents foretold that I would “shoot up in height and lose the baby weight” and sure enough that is what happened. I grew to meet my siblings eye to eye. I was suddenly the one leading the pack on our walks. Bumming them cigarettes and supplying their weed. I was suddenly a part of the conversation, but I still felt so separate. 

At the beginning of high school, I met a group of loyal and beautiful girls who loved me for me (and still do now as middle aged women). I wasn’t “too big” or “too much for them” (most of the time, anyway). But I sometimes took our friendships for granted in my endless longing for “coolness”. I continued to be enamored with stardom and If someone stunningly beautiful came along and asked me to hang out, I’d ditch my friends in an instant. I thought my proximity to celebrity-like people could make me cooler (read: skinnier).

This continued into adulthood. Whenever I was in a new group setting, like group therapy or eating disorder circles or yoga teacher training, I would scan the room for the most attractive girl and start studying her. Soon we would be friends and I would wonder, “Am I finally pretty and cool, too? Have I arrived? Have I caught up?”

But no matter how much traction I ever seemed to make up that mountain, people would continue to blow past me. The older I got, the deeper into motherhood I got, the slower I became and all the people I longed to walk alongside became dots or distant blurs, some disappearing completely.

Then one day, without realizing it, my constant nagging thought of “Why can’t I catch up,” morphed into, “What are they in such a hurry for?”.

One day, I stopped desperately needing to be in the front row of every fitness class, trying to shine the brightest, and felt perfectly content blending in with the crowd.

One day, I recognized that my desperation for “coolness” and beauty was actually a mask for my desperation to be loved. 

One day, the love of my family and the love of a higher power was more than enough.

One day I realized that I didn’t need to learn how to be cool or try to be cool, because what makes someone cool is their confidence that they are loved. 

And though I still sometimes feel like I don’t fully fit in at the playground and in mom circles, what has changed is that I now know I am always loved. 

Because I love me and the universe loves me and my family loves me and that is cool.