Evidence of agency

I pierced my ears. It’s usually not top of the list of gentle things one would expect to find when going through a rough patch. That’s an itch my tapped-out brain cooked up. I never do cool-kid things because they’re cool. I’m too boring and reasonable.

Years ago, an ex got her belly button pierced. I remember dismissing it almost immediately as silly, ew. In my mind it belonged to that category of things people did because they wanted to signal that they were spontaneous, rebellious, interesting, or whatever. I thought I saw through her intentions. She took it out a few days later. I probably had something to do with it, although I never asked her to. I just served her my best “you do you, silly girl.” Why did I even care? Christ, I was such a fruitcake.

I had that attitude toward piercings in general, except for the classic earlobe. That one was too ubiquitous to object to without sounding like the complete idiot I was. Naturally, by the time I pushed open the shop door, I had already overthought the whole thing. The actual piercing was disappointingly uneventful. A cool dude with stretched-out earlobes shoved a needle through each of mine. Not even a tear or an ouch. We talked for nearly an hour, mostly about California and how the thirties manage to be both brutal and great at the same time.

I’ve spent a lot of time and money lately trying to think my way through things. Therapy, writing, walking, meditation, all the respectable methods for dealing with being alive. Even ketamine, which has had the incredible effect of temporarily and gracefully kicking me out of my ego. All of that has its place. But there is something strangely effective about an act so stupidly simple that the brain doesn’t get much room to negotiate. The earrings are there the next morning. And the morning after that. When I take off my T-shirt too fast. They’re tiny, but they’re there. They don’t pretend to have fixed anything or explain anything. They don’t ask why. “Why” is not a particularly helpful question in the hope business anyway, as Anne Lamott points out. It’s all biology and circumstances, Robert Sapolsky would retort.

That may actually be why it did something for me. I’m still here. In this moment where I’m scared. I’m allowed to have that say. A tiny bit of evidence of agency is appreciated. And maybe that was the part I had missed with my ex all those years ago. She was an insecure student, anxious about finding her place in the world, bossed around by her parents. Maybe the point had never been to convince anyone she was cool. Doing something a little silly because you want to feel different inside your own skin isn’t fraud. It’s the stuff of life.

And so here I am at 34, checking out my bling in the mirror like a ten-year-old. It is oddly reassuring to discover that some of the stupid things you once believed, eventually, die. Not because you defeated them or finally became wise, but because they stopped making sense.

I was expecting meditation, therapy, or ketamine to bring this home a little earlier.

Oh well.