When I decided to look through my old photos to overanalyze my younger self-psyche, I forgot that looking through old photos would not only include the nostalgia, but also all the agony of regrettable haircuts and regrettable friendships now gone. Who asked for their Halloween posts with a side of pain and existential crisis? I did, obviously.
Today, I take you back to two more specific years. Close your eyes, or don’t because it would be difficult to read this if you did. Imagine the years are 2008. I am 16, an awkward nerd who spent her time at church youth group or watching Power Rangers with her best friend while getting way too hyped up on soda.
Halloween comes around and I want to do something interesting. We, meaning me, my best friend, and my parents, are obsessed with a show that was a craze at the time. A show where the lead was…difficult. So, this is the context of how I showed up at my church youth group Halloween party wearing this:
Dr. House, M.D. from the show by that name. I face panted on a beard, wore professional clothes with a lab coat over them that I stained with fake blood. I wore a baseball cap and walked with a cane. Oh, I also had an old pill bottle that I made a fake label for that read: Vicadin. It was full of tic tacs that I popped throughout the night.
I really have to had it to my youth group leaders for not batting an eye. Lots of churches are sensitive about Halloween, but they were very open about it. Lots of youth leaders may have had questions for the teen handing out tic tacs from a pill bottle while dressed as a famous TV drug addict. They did not. I really appreciate the patient and unquestioning faith they had in me that allowed me to let my freak flag fly unabashed. I often write negatively about the lessons I learned in youth group as a teen, but one thing is true: what confidence I did have at that age, I owe at least in part to their loving acceptance. Their lessons were at times harsh, but always meant from love. I may have had to disentangle from their theology, but I remember their actions with warmth. They loved me, weird as I was.
And they let me show up to church dressed as an emotionally disturbed drug addicted doctor.
Of course, the next year (2009. I’m 17) I decided it would be fun to make this a trend!
I decided to do the character House was based on, another famous drug addicted genius, Sherlock Holmes. (Yes, this is the best photo I could find, it was pre-smart phones, and in those dark times we did not necessarily get photographic evidence of everything). My Mom sewed the cape for me, which I still have.
The only comments I got this time? I should go for a trifecta and do Dr. Freud, who famously used cocaine. As I was already into psychology to a large degree, I really considered doing this. I can’t remember why this did not happen, but truthfully, in my deep dive, I did not find a costume for 2010 at all. I have no memory of why this would be.
So what can we learn about me from this? Well, we can learn how hard I cringe realizing how light I made of drug addiction. I was learning a lot about psychology and fascinated by anything that had to do with it, that came out in my costumes. I was not yet sensitive to the fact that maybe this was not a very good idea. It is fascinating trying to remember what it felt like to be a teenager and be distinctly of two minds. I cared about psychology and wanted to “save the world” (yes I had real white knight syndrome as a teenager), but I also found psychology fascinating in a way that feels almost voyueristic looking back. I loved serial killers at this time too with no real understanding that the people they killed were real people. It was if the reality that I saw first hand (I came into studying psychology because of trauma my friends experienced) and the concepts of psychology outside my grasp had no connection in my brain.
This makes sense, developmentally. My young mind was trying to make sense of the world still, but I was coming from a very egocentric place. It is painful to think about, but I am learning to be forgiving of my younger self.
The other thing it tells me?
I used Halloween as a chance to take up space. I chose characters who were rude and difficult because the other 364 days of the year I was so obliging. I never let myself spread out, I squeezed my entire self into small spaces, but on Halloween I could be as much as I wanted to because it wasn’t me doing it. I was just in character. Even then, some part of me wanted to break out of my self-imposed ideas of what a girl should be.
More to come as I try to figure out where all those old photos went to!
Brief recommends of the day:
The Spirits podcast that I reviewed a few days ago came out with an amazing episode on the history of horror movies that is absolutely perfect for an October listen! Check it out.
Existential Wednesday 