Colette Ryder-Hall was the first person I met in high school that did a zine. I'm pretty sure I didn't know what a zine was until I met her actually. One early issue of Looks Yellow, Taste Red featured a positive review of my sloppy 9th grade punk band PME, generously comparing us to my favorite band Dead Kennedys. Colette was also the first person I knew who dropped out of school on political/ethical grounds and, through her zine, taught me about Grace Llewellyn's classic The Teenage Liberation Handbook. This made Colette a mentor of sorts and definitely an inspiration, whether she knew it or not.
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First, I dropped out of high school. A year later, bored and frightened of enduring another Cape Cod winter, I went to college. After 5 years of enlightening but rather aimless higher education, at the ripe old age of 23, I graduated with a BA. I felt like a prisoner being let out of prison. I was terrified and I wanted back in. So I opted for a MA in creative writing. This involved moving to the middle of the country, discovering I hated teaching freshman comp and taking a job at a natural foods coop to cover the unexpected expenses of being a grad student (steep bar tabs and pricey plane tickets back home for major holidays, mainly). At the age of 25, I graduated again. I stayed at the coop job until I went insane at the age of 28 and realized I had to find a meaningful path in life (which did not involve the retail and merchandising of organic produce), or die trying. I quit my job and drove around the country in a blue Toyota Tercel for awhile, then returned to Iowa, where I went back to school (again) and got married. This is why now, at the age of 31, I find myself in the position of many 22-year-olds: about to graduate, broke and waiting on a Peace Corps application that has been in medical review for several months already.
I do feel old sometimes now. First, while most people assume I'm still in my early 20's when they meet me, I'm pretty sure they're not looking closely. I have collected a lot of white hairs in the past ten years. And I have officially moved past the time when wearing mini-skirts is a good idea. Second, it seems that in the Midwest people tend to get married and have families younger than was the norm on the East Coast. I got married at the age of 29 and while we plan on having a family, it's going to be a while. Being surrounded by people in their twenties who are far more "settled down" than me is weird and it fills me with irrational fear that I've wasted my most fertile years already.
Mostly, I am grateful to have entered my thirties. While the intense emotion and creative energy of my teenage years and early twenties made for a lot of excitement and productivity, it was hard. Everything was louder, brighter and potentially emotionally devastating. At the age of 31, I don't care as much and that's okay. I may not be producing a zine every five minutes or hand-crafting bizarre objects in my bedroom while listening to loud, angry music. I may not be routinely having intense heart-to-heart conversations with random people late into the night. I may not be full of righteous anger and a burning desire to assert myself at all times. Instead, I have an inner stability. I don't constantly wonder if I'm crazy. I don't blame everything on myself. I can rest assured that things generally work out, regardless of how much or how little I worry about them. I am becoming more comfortable with myself all the time.
So maybe my situation is a blessing - a chance to experience my early years of adulthood all over again, with the added bonuses of experience, confidence and inner balance.
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