#TBT to 2/2/97, a.k.a. my 13th birthday, a.k.a. the time in my life when I wore oxblood Doc Martins every day and posted open letters to Courtney Love on my Geocities (or was it Angelfire?) site, which was coyly called “Pigtails for Rachel.” I can remember feeling pretty damn on top of my game that night. We had just returned to my parents’ house from the “dinner party” I threw myself at Il Fornaio (because what 13-year-old desperately trying to be a 30-year-old wouldn’t want to ring in her teen years with eight of her closest girlfriends and a classy-ass plate of capellini al pomodoro?), and I had on the best outfit I had ever assembled. Or close to it. Micro-mini vintage polyester slip. Docs with special-occasion silver shoelaces. Slightly padded bra that I begged my mother to buy me for an hour straight at Macy’s on Lake. Urban Decay lipstick & nail polish in “Gash.” Gwen Stefani wore Gash—she said so in Seventeen Magazine.
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Make a wish, they said. I mean, because that’s what they say on your birthday. I’ve always been someone who believes in the power of wishes and candles and concentration and moments of silence (light a candle—any candle— in my face, and I’ll get Fiona-Apple-on-a-rainy-day reflective on you faster than you can say “Shadowboxer”), and I remember running through the feels so hard when this picture was taken. I had been drinking for one year, bleeding for two, and hating myself for at least ten—all things that I was pretty sure made me a Very Modern Woman in the eyes of the world. Because women drink and bleed and hate their bodies. Obviously. So they told me to make a wish, and I wished for a different body and for a boy to fall in love with me. And in this moment, the moment captured in this photo, the moment before I blew out my candles, I knew that I was wishing for all the wrong shit. I have always had enough education and enough self-awareness to know that I am wishing for all. the wrong. shit. And yet I have held my breath and wished for it all anyway, year after year. I’ll be 32 in February. We’ll see. #throwbackthursday
I Still Read Your Horoscope 