TWENTIES-My Artist

“Life is a big party and all you have to bring with you is...

...YOURSELF.

Are you willing to show up and celebrate?”

     Do any of you remember when Cameron Diaz dated Justin Timberlake? They were nine years apart. This was right about the time I met my free-spirited artist (and another surfer) who happened to be nine years younger. I was twenty-nine. The Hollywood couple helped me justify dating someone who wasn’t even legal to drink. My dad labeled him as my “boy toy.” I literally hid him in my house for at least six months because of my embarrassment of the age difference. I “thought” we wouldn’t last, and yet, I can say that he was a true love in my life.

     This had been my first experience fully falling for someone’s heart. My mom would even say, “He’s so sweet.” This was also the first time I really experienced someone falling for mine, treasuring me like I was Aphrodite in the flesh. His personality and appearance were an additional plus. He was funny, also. I was so relieved to date someone who could help me see that life does go on after my previous boyfriend, Jay. We met partying in The Narrows at Lake Nacimiento. While our friends were whooping it up around a campfire and making dinner, we secretively ran down to the dock, swam from boat to boat and had our first kiss at dusk in the water. I made myself feel young again. I know that could seem silly, considering I was only twenty-nine, but I was the girl who bought a book on “how to turn thirty.” A time where I truly was having MY peculiar midlife crisis. Younger friends would roll their eyes when I would panic about getting older, telling me how great I looked for my age. Outside validation is only a bandaid, and I was programmed by my father to believe that the best days of life are when we are young and free. To make my situation even more confusing, I had also been dating a thirty-nine year old man and made myself sick in deciding which relationship was best. Breaking out in hives, I felt that I SHOULD go for the responsible man with a “good job,” not some unreliable surfer. Doesn’t sound like a big problem. After all, I had already had cancer, TWICE. Didn’t matter. I “sweated the small stuff” like a pro, eventually breaking up with my senior and following my heart. 

     During our years together, my “blonde hair/blue eyed” surfer boy (seemed to have become a prerequisite) and I went to various reggae concerts, rented a moped in Costa Rica, partied in New Orleans, and hung out many nights with a group of about twelve friends of varying ages. He had become sponsored by Hurley, giving me all the cute surfer clothes a girl could want. As time went by, we began staying in my house like an old married couple, and he began painting. He had borrowed some of his mom’s paintbrushes and was on his way to becoming a well known artist in our area. Because I had very little talent, he became my teacher, painting for hours at my kitchen table overlooking the old oak tree. This was the first time I can remember feeling free, living in the present moment and being my truest self. I also began making jewelry, and we began selling our pieces. I was awe-struck at his talent because he was a novice, and I encouraged him enthusiastically to continue to go the distance. For (what I think) was my birthday, he painted me a picture on a huge piece of canvas that represented us, laying partially nude in the clouds. I hung it on my bedroom wall with pride. It was truly a magical time where I LET GO and LIVED. 

     As I approached my thirties, I began to know that I wanted our relationship to change. I felt like a woman who’s biological clock was ticking, who was living a life of a teenager. I wanted to get married and have babies. My artist didn’t have a place of his own and still being...well... a stereotypical artist. I urged him to get a “real” job. He went to massage school, and I received free massages from he and two other friends almost daily. Man, those were the days. To my disappointment, he wasn’t THAT motivated. I began to feel like his mother. When I got desperate enough, I mentioned to him that he could work for the county. He would then have BENEFITS (A major criteria in my father’s way of seeing things). A janitor perhaps? He looked at me like I had gone mad. Addiction never makes sense, and I was addictively demanding that he grow up, not realizing that I was the one who still needed to mature. Like my father, I wanted control. Yet another lesson to be learned.