The image did remind me of my youth. I wanted so badly to be a wild child but I didn't have it in me. I was shy and had zero confidence. I was bullied for four years by a boy in my school. Between that boy and my dad's rage, I was scared, a lot.
When I went into junior high school, my bully all but disappeared. I was academic, he was not. I started making friends, started spending less time at home. My best friend's family and home became a safe place for me.
High school increased my time away from my family. More friends but lots of drama, as only teenage girls can do drama.
I discovered boys, discovered I could attract boys and thought that gave me some power. And then I discovered alcohol, that special elixir that that could smooth away my anxiety, make me feel confident and stopped me caring so much what other people thought of me. I started dancing and OMG I loved dancing. When I was drunk and on the dance floor, I was free, and that's the closest I ever came to being a wild child.
37paddington: I kind of love this post. Memories of a wild-ish youth, just wild enough maybe. Love that AI image of you. I see you so clearly in it, in your wild child phase. You also look like your daughter, or rather she looks like you. I enjoy her cooking videos. Sometimes I look back and the me I was seems like another life. But we lived all those lives, and they brought us here. Love.
ReplyDeleteYou do look a bit like a hippie chick in your AI portrait. It think it's the fringed vest and those big hoop earrings.
ReplyDeleteI was a wild child. I was a teen in the late 60s and that was a rebellious time. I wasn't a drinker but I was a doer of other substances. Then one day I became respectable, sort of!! I really like this photo. Right out of my era.
ReplyDeleteI see you in the photo like I saw myself in the same version of it. I was never a wild child either. I was very well-behaved--until college at least. :)
ReplyDeleteOh, you were a beautiful almost-wild-child. I am sure that picture captures what you were feeling when you felt free.
ReplyDeleteI was a wild child. I didn't drink alcohol but discovered mushrooms and LSD and weed fairly quickly and I loved them. I'm glad I did them. I learned a great deal, especially from the psychedelics that I still firmly believe now, at almost seventy years of age. Being wild was my way of saying "Fuck you!" to my family which was so normal-looking from the outside and so horrible/rotten/evil on the inside. Whatever I could do to distance myself from that, I did. And I do not regret that either.
That photo looks almost arts and crafts
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting how the AI captures the "you". In high school and college I was the bane of my parents' existence. Then I got a job.
ReplyDeleteYou look fab in this picture and from your description I think we would have had some great adventures had we met.
ReplyDeleteGreat photo, and it provoked a lot of thought for you and your readers.
ReplyDeleteI like your hippie look! I suppose getting drunk and dancing is the way most of us experimented with wildness in our youth.
ReplyDeleteI like Hippie you, it suits you!!! I avoided all Teen Girl Drama by mostly having all Male Friends. *LOL* I was a Hippie Gal, and at the time, didn't think I was Wild or particularly Rebellious, until I got Older and realized, Holy Shit Dawn, no wonder your Apples didn't fall far from the Tree Generations later. *Bwahahaha* My Mom was a True Bohemian tho', and my Nanna before her, so, on the Maternal Side it tends to run in the Family and still does. Then, on my Dads side, well, they are some Crazy Injuns too. *Smiles*
ReplyDeleteLove your Wild Child. And all my friends believe AI will ruin the world. I say no, it will save us.
ReplyDeleteInteresting reflections emerging from your AI experiment. Teenage years can be so hard to negotiate. It's not all plain sailing. I wonder what happened to that bully boy and hope that he ended up cleaning blocked sewage pipes.
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