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| andrew mcmahon in the wilderness | the beacham | 11.19.2014 |
Fourth grade is my first memory of drawing a
self-portrait with a tattoo. It was a butterfly placed in the area reserved for
the stereotypical pirate’s “I Heart Mom” tattoo on the upper arm.
Middle school came with its struggles of finding my
personal style. Was I prep? Was I “thug”? Always lingering was the desire to
fit in with the scene kids – their chipped black nail polish, edgy haircuts,
and black & white checkered Vans skater shoes.
Freshman year of high school was the first time I
really wanted to go to a show. Modest Mouse had just released “Good News for
People Who Love Bad News” and their tour would be coming through Minneapolis. I
begged my parents to let me go, and complained to Kyle in third period English
after a discussion on “To Kill a Mockingbird” about how my parents just didn't get it.
January of my sophomore year of college I wrote a
blog post on my opinion of serendipity. “The people who are serendipitous are
the ones who are open to something new and make the best out of life’s
outcomes.” Part of me wants to correct the last word to ‘circumstances,’ but
perhaps ‘outcomes’ is the better word.
At some point I had internalized an idea that I was
supposed to wait for my life to begin. Along with this notion, I began to
believe that my life began once I was in a committed relationship. Would my
future mate appreciate the fact that I waited around for them to begin my life?
Would my hypothetical husband be ok with my desire for tattoos and piercings? I
was a blank slate, waiting for the right person to come around to co-write my
story.
All of a sudden I was 24, two years out of college,
and living on my own. I had a conversation with an individual who had the same
idea locked in their subconscious, and it wasn't until that moment that I
realized that I had been doing it all wrong. All of this time I had kept
waiting for the future to come, and meanwhile the future was becoming my
present, and my present became my mundane past.
December of 2014 I stood on the lawn at the Big O
festival listening to Young The Giant perform while I waited for headliners
Weezer and Fall Out Boy. My coworker and friend turned to me and said “aren't you just the little concert goer?!” I looked down at myself and around at my
surroundings, and it was one of the happiest moments I've ever experienced. I
had finally made it.
I hadn't made it because I looked like the girls in
the Tumblr posts I had re-blogged for years. I hadn't made it because I was at a music festival listening to some obscure or outdated bands. It wasn't because I
finally got the tattoo I had been planning for years, and it definitely wasn't because I had found my future husband. I made it because I was finally living
my life – for myself.
