Seventeen Magazine

Me in red, back in the day.

When I was 12, my mother started buying me Seventeen magazine.  She had read it when she was a kid and remembered it fondly.  I can still remember picking up that first issue, it seemed so grown up and sophisticated with fashion spreads, make-up tips, newsy articles and short stories.  As a 12 year old late bloomer, there was very little of me actually reflected on those pages, but that was hardly the point.  It was the possibility that mattered.

You would think something like Seventeen wouldn't have suited me very well.  I grew up learning survival skills like "keeping 'my place' is important for self preservation" and "displaying more than the minimum necessary self-esteem will be considered as a dangerous sign of rebellion and will be dealt with."  I knew from an early age that my mostly Lebanese features (and not the pert-nosed, doe eyed kind, either) in no way resembled the perky fresh-faced beauties that graced the covers in those days before the "United Colors of Benetton" told us all that ethnicity was ok.  I was hardly the country club set or even the sort that the country club set would bother to hang around with for comparison's sake.  And I was never one of the popular girls.  But still I loved reading Seventeen.

It may seem an even odder choice to those who met me by the time I was a senior in high school or in the first couple of years of college, when I was sporting punk hair and a wardrobe of Salvation Army selections as an outward expression of my inward "I'm damn well done playing a game I can never win" attitude (ironically, coinciding with the time I was an actual seventeen).  But as a younger teen studying each glossy new page, I believed.  I believed with all my heart and soul, and Seventeen was my bible of hope.

I believed that if I could just master the right make-up tips, maybe put together a few crafty room upgrades, get the right wardrobe essentials for my shape (stick) and personality (really quiet), figure out how to fix my personal flaws through the variety of useful tips gleaned from well considered articles and helpful quizzes, then I could somehow turn my life around and rid myself of the anxiety and disappointment that seemed to track my every step.  I was sure--deeply, determinedly sure--that the answer was in there somewhere and if Seventeen and I could just figure out where I kept going wrong, I could finally turn it all around.

Yes, I really was once that naive.

In those days before internet, every issue was valuable, but the highlight of the magazine year, the issue that I would study carefully from cover to cover and return to again and again, was the giant August back-to-school issue.  That issue, above all others, contained a bumper crop of self-improvement ideas just in time for the fresh start of a new school year.  If the regular issues hinted at the promise of better things to come, this giant issue screamed loud from the rooftops that change was possible and this very year really could be the year when I finally had "my best year ever!" (easily obtainable with just a little attention to my personal style, the 12 simple pieces that would update my wardrobe, some focused dedication to avoiding these 8 annoying habits, and perhaps a quick quiz to determine what my favorite color said about me).

For me, in those days, hope really did spring eternal and self-acceptance was nothing more than a foolish distraction intending, unsuccessfully, to waylay me on my path to a better life.

Strangely, after a having couple of days to let it settle in, this news from my oncologist that I'll probably never run again feels a lot like giving up on the Seventeen dream.

In high-school I ran track, in college I ran track and cross country.  I made good friends doing that and found a slightly healthier outlet for my compulsive drive toward self-improvement and belonging than my previous focus on being "as good as" the girls on the pages of Seventeen.  In various stages of my adult life since, I've gone out for a run and, in doing so, once again was remembered what it was like to be young with the world rushing past me.

But, truthfully, my last college workout was the last time I ever seriously committed to being a runner.  And my last semester of college was the last time I ran regularly for any length of time.

It's not that this news about not running has really stolen that much away from my actual life.  It's just that it's nibbled away a little bit of promise.  That little voice inside me that whispers, "Hey, I could do that again, it's possible!" is now is followed by a sightly terse, "No. No you can't."

I will make peace with it, of course.  I will continue walking. I will cheer on my daughter as she runs, enjoy hearing about my brother's track team, and the 5Ks and half-marathons of family and friends.  I will take pleasure in all the things I can still do and remember that I'm lucky to be alive and lucky to have only minor cancer-related restrictions at the moment.

But it may take me a little while to get comfortable with the understanding that this particular hope for what my future might hold isn't going to be.

Still, August is just around the corner, and who knows? Maybe this year will turn out to be "my best year ever!"  Only this time it would be on my own terms.