When my future child toddles up to me and says, "Mama! Mooshi mooshi! I want to be a hipster when I grow up!" I'll respond, "No fucking way, baby." Why? Because being a hipster, especially a hipster involved in the local music scene in a small Utah town crawling with chauvinistic folk, sucks. Oh lord/Thom Yorke, I just fell into a classic hipster trap, didn't I? The Self-Loathing Hipster©. It's not that I hate myself (but wait! I do! but not all of the time, only most of the time!); I just dislike much of what I was surrounded by in my early 20s. (Side note: Please help me with my punctuation. I am so lost when parenthetical statements get involved.)
Far too frequently I put myself in situations that pacified me. The males thought they had a right to my time and my attention while the females were in vocal admiration, but silent competition. My body was a shell, my brain fuzzy, my words seemingly unnecessary. And for whatever reasons, I put up with all of it. Maybe I was too tired, maybe I didn't care, maybe I was too tired to care.
This helplessness was not always prominent. There were periods of loveliness and connection and compassion. The helplessness, however, was a loyal thread that ran through those formative years, always there to soothe and suffocate. I do not know who I am without it.
And so, future sweet babe o' mine, I will try my damndest to keep you out of skinny jeans and floppy beanies for as long as possible.
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