a fresh coat of paint

when my sister got home from her first year of college in may, she decided to redecorate her room before moving her stuff back in. her room hadn't changed for the eight years that we've lived in this house. so for a week the entire family was stepping over suitcases and milk cartons full of clothes and books and picture frames, stacked in the hallways and on the stairs and in the laundry room. we stripped the old border off--the one she was never quite sure she liked, though she had never hated it. we painted over the neutral sand color on the walls--a color she had always resented because she hadn't picked it--with a bold rose color. (i'll spare you the description of the kickass cutting in job i did. i'm a little ocd when it comes to cutting in. i have dreams about it.) we hung new curtains. we rearranged the furniture.

the other night i was hanging out in her room while she hung some pictures. we got talking about the way going away changes you--how it affects your identity and sense of self. and how one of the hardest things about going away and coming back is that the people you left expect you to be what you were when you left.

i think everyone rubs up against that at some point in their lives. you go away to college, or leave for a summer. you establish a life of your own somewhere, and then try to come back and interact with your parents. you go abroad and interact with the ideas and customs of another culture. you experience some dramatic healing from some lifelong crap.

i've done all of the above over the last few years. and it's always hard to come back and translate the changes. how do you communicate subtle internal changes? slight realignments of identity? i went with a friend of mine in ireland last year to pierce her nose before she came back to the states. i usually come back and purge my wardrobe. i've changed--those clothes are no longer an expression of my self. i cut my hair. i do my make-up differently. i change my language. like sharon redecorating her room, i need some sort of external manifestation of the changes that have taken place. i need a fresh coat of paint to remind myself that i am not the woman i was.