There is such a drawback to not having an ego. When I was younger and much more svelte, I could have easily worn all those midriff-showing fashions young girls are wearing today and have looked as though the clothes were made for me. Yes, I had the abs for it at the time, the muscular line down the middle, naturally developed after countless jumps and stunts, and it would have been the perfect look.

But damn it, I just didn’t have the ego for it. I hid myself like some Afghan woman under Taliban rule, covering my flesh as though my life depended on it and constantly wearing pants and long sleeves to hide my limbs. The one time I wore a string bikini, it was in Hawaii amongst my high school peers, and I never felt so exposed in my entire life. I remember all those eyes, and I could swear they were made of laser beams that left red aiming dots all over my body, with missiles aimed in my direction. [Uh… ahem.]

Now that I’m older, I wonder why I went through so much trouble to hide myself. Someone much older and wiser tells me that I will never look as good as I do in the present, so I should dress to show off what I have.

“Are you out of your mind?!” is always my first response. Anything beyond jeans and a sweater is a little out of my comfort zone, and I am nowhere near as fit as I was as a teenager. I hide my hair in a braid, my eyes behind glasses, and my face with no makeup. Whatever “looks” I have is all in potential, with nothing shown.

“But watch,” I’m told, “one day, your breasts will droop. Your face and neck will wrinkle, and you’ll have to pose with your hand at your chin or with a scarf on your shoulders to hide the aging skin below your jaw, just like all those romance novelists on the back of their books. When that happens, you’ll look back on these days and long for the looks that you have now, and you’ll say, ‘Wow, if I still looked like that, I’d wear this or that and wear my hair this way or that way,’ just like you do now when you look back to the time you were 16 years old and just delicious.”

So says that wise and learned voice during my little midriff crisis, when I lament over the lack of the line that used to run down my abdomen, and I hide that little lack with a small tug on the front of my shirt, self-conscious and ill at ease with myself.

The older, wiser voice stays silent for a moment while its owner slowly shakes a head of dyed, thinning hair, hands gently rubbing a soft, rounded belly hidden beneath a large, concealing shirt.

Hindsight is 20/20, and our eyes all start to fail at a certain age. Maybe by then, the lack of ego won’t matter. Or maybe, it just doesn’t matter how old we are, and we will always lack that ego.

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