A twisted path to self-love
becoming a vampire and modeling in El Salvador
For me, the road to self-love and self-acceptance has been a journey I am still on. At many times it has been rocky, or in secret moments it has been fragile and tentatively beautiful.
At age 14 I worried about getting too fat so sometimes I ate food coloring-yellow popcorn out of a giant store-bought bag in place of a real meal. The young me thought this was low-calorie and that processed popcorn was somehow, a be-thin-now food. I alternated the popcorn with raisins my mom kept in a large Tupperware container while devouring books whilst lying on the sofa in my great grandmother’s house. Sweet and salty. That was me. And I worried at 5’6” and 114 pounds, about beauty. I was never happy with how I felt in my skin. I weighed myself almost every day. I made my insecurity about my body. It wasn’t reality from the outside, but it was reality for me.
When I was growing up, my mother used to talk about the 21” waist she used to have before she got married. That probably fed my insecurity. I learned early that somehow, inches and waists made you pretty. And mine was never 21”.
Then I got divorced. Wow, it was so hard. Gut wrenching. I don’t like to compare the pain of past experiences (like my-divorce-was-harder-than-yours) with people like penis lengths. But yesterday I got into it with a photographer. He said his divorce was unbelievably bad. I did believe him. I know how bad they can be. But then I told him it was likely he didn’t hold a candle to my story. In a rush at the end of our time together, he shared his. Maybe quickly so it wouldn’t hurt so much? If someone really listens, sometimes we feel more deeply. You know what I mean? Sometimes we just want to win the penis-length thing.
I think he and I might have a draw and his was more public and included famous people. He does have that on me. Mine was about family. Ahhhh…. and I was a wreck when it ended. My self-esteem was low. The body thing I worried about as a teenager left me totally for a short time. I couldn’t eat and I lost weight. People call it the “divorce diet.” I hope you haven’t experienced that. It is so strange to learn how you can survive on eating so little. I did. A couple bites of pizza was all I could get down. I was slim and I was sexy. And my self-esteem was in the gutter.
Over time, I started personal coaching with Lisa Romano. She teaches about recovery from codependency. I didn’t know about codependency when I got a divorce. I didn’t know about a lot of things. I had to learn. Codependent people learn a coping-with-life-in-your-family strategy as children and that strategy is to please other people. What went along with that was no sense at all of what I really wanted and needed, and a very heightened sensitivity to the feelings of others. In the big picture, I was a people-pleaser. And I had good reason to be. As a child, it was the best tool I had.
After “The Divorce,” my self-esteem was in the gutter. So, one thing Lisa suggested was to make a list of things to tell myself that were kind and supportive. To tell myself I was beautiful and that I mattered. “I matter.” I know for sure that was one of the phrases I had on my list.
Then Lisa said to sit in front of a mirror, look yourself in the eyes, and tell yourself what you really need to hear and are afraid to believe. I don’t remember what I wrote on that list except for the “I matter” thing, but I followed through with the activity and for months, I started the day looking myself in the eye and speaking the lines I wrote to myself. Lisa said we had to learn to reprogram out brains. It as all about neuroplasticity and rewiring things. So I tried and it wasn’t easy. I mean, who sits in front of mirror every morning and talks to themselves on purpose? But I did. I was desperate because I had been deeply unhappy for a long time and I was tired of always looking at myself in the mirror and religiously and unhappily checking the shape of my belly.
I knew it was irrational. I knew it was unhealthy. And I knew it wasn’t just me who struggled. I remember I was in a yoga class one day in Del Mar, California, in a studio where I used to teach. Del Mar is an expensive place to live and most women there have enough money to take care of themselves. I am pretty sure all those female try-to-be-pretty things existed in some form in that room: plastic surgery, expensive clothes, fitness classes (too many), special diets, nutritionists… those kinds of things. And that day in yoga, the women started talking and I realized not one of them felt like they were beautiful. They all were suffering, just like me.
It was tiring and demeaning. And I just could’t stop. For years, I looked at my stomach. So, with Lisa, I tried to heal that self-hatred in me.
I have to say also, in addition to the self-hatred, was a fear of beauty. Women who are not happy and comfortable in their skin often feel jealous of other women they see as more beautiful. At times in my life, I have felt a target of that and it has not been easy.
The worst time was when my grandmother took my sister and I clothes shopping. That was a really special thing for us. My family didn’t have a lot of money, and my mother made most of our clothes, or we got boxes of hand-me downs from our second cousins which felt like gifts on Christmas day. (I loved to dress up and I loved the surprise of the unknown inside the big, corrugated cardboard box). That day, we were all together trying on clothes in a big dressing room in a mall somewhere, when my grandmother looked at my sister and told her she should try to be more thin, like me. I felt terrible. I can only imagine what it did to my sister. I didn’t want that either.
And to be clear again, I didn’t feel thin or beautiful. Any whisper of either of those things were also now dangerous or slightly repulsive. I also wanted them, desperately.
Later, the phrases I said to myself in the mirror probably helped and I still felt insecure. Eventually, I went to a retreat with Lisa and other people recovering from codependency. It was at a spa, which is something I would never do normally. Lisa said we needed to learn to value ourselves and to receive. So there I was, in Pennsylvania, recovering from codependency and trying to “learn to receive.”
I arrived a few days early to spend some extra time with people I had befriended in her classes, also recovering from codependency. That is when something happened. The most important thing. There was a moment when we were outside, and my friend Lisa (another Lisa), offered to take pictures of me. We were standing in a beautiful garden full flowers. For one glorious moment, with my friend celebrating and cheering me on, I stopped worrying about jealousy and about being good enough. I pretended I was modeling.
I spread my arms wide and spun in circles surrounded by flowers. I felt the breeze on my skin and the warmth of the sun on my face. I let myself move in sensuous arcs, slowly, as the cell-phone camera went, “click, click, click.” Beauty. I was dancing and I was feeling it…the beauty in me and the crisp early fall day surrounding me.
My friends knew how hard it was to love yourself and to really own your beauty without being afraid. For just a moment, I felt free and with light on my face, I finally breathed. For those brief moments, I didn’t care about my belly.
The sun-drenched moment ended and I continued to try to grow something in me. Something about really owning my beauty.
As I got older, I talked to God. I decided I was not the plastic surgery type. What was beauty in someone who was aging? In my mind, I saw an old women with many creases lining her face that came from wisdom and happiness. And in my vision, she had smiling eyes. She was happy. So happy you mostly saw the eyes that were sparkling and the wrinkles made it all better somehow. That was beauty. That was what I wanted to become someday.
Eventually I decided to stop coloring my hair and see what it looked like naturally. My mother’s hair started to go grey in high school. Mine started in my 20’s. The first time I dyed it I was going to a fancy party with my executive husband. I felt the choice point and I made it, a tiny bit reluctantly. I decided to dye my hair. I consciously decided to be my best version of arm candy, which probably says something both about me and about our relationship. It also says something about how I felt about myself in my 20s. How much I thought other people’s versions of beauty were the right ones. I felt like no one really saw me, the real me. For sure, I couldn’t.
Which brings me further into my story about this journey (and yes, I am getting to the point about becoming a vampire….just wait…).
Over the last few years, I let my hair grow. It became wavy with white streaks. My hair danced and I took it dancing. We danced together in Costa Rica at Dance Church with the young hippies. More and more, I let myself be free.
I stopped looking at my stomach so much and I bought clothes that felt good. Scanty clothes that felt sensual and lovely. In Costa Rica, two women took me shopping. One was older than me and one was younger, a mother and daughter team. Both of them were owning something that had to do with beauty and sensuality. They both purred with it. That is the best word I have for it. You could hear it in their voices and see it when they posed for photos and enjoyed the posing. Body type didn’t matter. Age didn’t matter.
In Arenal, we drank chocolate and ate dessert together. Then we went through shops with multi-colored dresses hanging outside, fluttering in the breeze. My hair and I didn’t know what colors worked with this new, more free version of me. There was a moment when the younger woman held a dress up to me and smiled. Then she said, “Mmmmmm,” in a way that would attract any male in the vicinity. That was the dress for me. “Mmmmmm.” I would have never picked it or seen that it worked with the new me, and it did. What worked even more was what I was learning about the energy that came with that sound and their enthusiasm shopping with me. They were not worried at all about their bodies. They were simply embodying their innate beauty and it was incredibly sensual. It was sexy. Those things had both felt slightly off limits and dangerous to me. Unwanted attention and jealousy are not easy.
There were many barriers to loving and accepting myself and they were slowly dissolving. And I mean slowly. But somehow, recently, the dissolving was moving more quickly. I was starting to feel beautiful and to enjoy my sensuality.
Which brings me here to El Salvador and my recent and very unexpected day of modeling.
After attending the day of the ice bath (which I wrote about last week), my new friend, Elieh, who is one of the owners of the Elixir juice company here, texted me and asked if I would like to do some modeling? He and his wife, Iris, planned and hosted the day of the ice bath. Now, for some unexpected reason, they were befriending me.
When I read his text, a tiny bit of shock hit me along with a lot of mental questions like these: “Don’t they know how old I am?” “Why me, when there were so many beautiful women at the event, including Miss El Salvador?”
Elieh explained that the photographer who wanted to hire me had a product he wanted to sell in the United States and was looking for expat models. I still felt I was too old. I had mostly lost the stomach-checking thing by then, but I was not beyond noticing that I had more wrinkles than I did in my 20s.
So, instead of just saying yes, I said, “Well, is he going to pay me enough to cover my taxi to the city?” (I know. I think I was afraid).
Elieh assured me that it would be more than enough to cover the taxi. So I said, “Sure, thanks for thinking of me.” And I figured this would be another life adventure and why not? Modeling...maybe it would be fun?
After I said yes, Elieh mentioned that the photographer, Guti, had 48 thousand followers on Instagram. I went and looked at the pictures. They were amazing and the models were young and all of them appeared to have some version of “perfect” bodies.
Oh my God.
I had one pair of Earth Runner sandals that I wear everywhere. That means I walk through the river next to the hotel, through sand, mud, and once in the sea, without taking them off. Those were all I had to be “dressy.”
I decided I needed to go shopping. I won’t go into details, except to say that a friend offered to drive and shop with me. She wasn’t the same as my Costa Rica friends though and she was ready to leave pretty quickly. I decided to brave figuring out how to get home by bus or taxi and kept hunting. It was fun, almost predatory.
In addition to the shoe situation, my clothes have been washed locally and they were deteriorating quickly. My Costa Rica dress came back to me from the laundry with the elastic bodice stretched and the hemline no longer straight, dragging dangerously close to the ground. I found that the girl at the hotel thought hand washing on a rough board in the sink was better than using the washing machine. They save the machine for sheets, which need less hard-core love. There also isn’t a dryer here and I noticed clothes were not always simply left on the clothesline to dry. Sometimes they were spread on a corrugated red roof to bake in the sun. So, my clothes had been suffering.
I started looking for a new location for laundry.
Meanwhile, I was finally in this cute town of Tunco shopping to prepare for my day of modeling, which I was both excited and nervous about. Before she left, my new friend told me she had already taken me to the nicest store in town, and there weren’t that many. But after she departed, I found a better one with a lovely lady who helped me find things. I started to feel like my six-year-old self playing dress-up at my grandmother’s house. I twirled in front of her and asked for her opinion, which was communicated in nods and smiles. She didn’t speak English.
I tried on bathing suits. I tried on shorts and pants that fit comfortably, just the way I like. She went into secret hidden places and emerged with more things. Soon I had a pile of beautiful new clothes and a lovely hand woven purse in tan and beige, that closed delightfully with a zipper. Everything matched the shoes I had found somewhere else.
I decided to splurge and go ahead and get a French manicure and pedicure. I figured it wouldn’t last long at the beach and I would feel better for it. Plus, it was the day after my birthday and I was still celebrating.
It turned out to be more beautiful than any I had ever received. There was no massage chair in the nail salon and I had to reach one hand across my body at an awkward angle to be painted. But by the time it was over, three women had worked on me and I felt like a queen. The final artist repainted my big toe tip three times until she was happy. And I knew I could show up at the modeling event and feel classy. It was fun and it was also a relief.
It took an hour to get a ride home. I tried waiting for a bus and learned Sunday's are not good days for busses or taxis. El Salvador on the weekends is busy. I spent an hour waiting on the main road with a young man who spoke English and helped me practice my broken Spanish. He told me about his family and girlfriend. Eventually, it was so dark I couldn’t read the signs on the busses (which you have to flag down frantically and then they still don’t always stop to pick you up).
My attempts to get an Uber weren’t working, so he called someone directly he knew from his job working at a nearby hotel. I thought it would be nice to give him a ride home since it was on the way. We got in and I breathed a sigh of relief. Finally. It was very dark and I was tired. I asked the young man if he told the driver where to let him off? He looked at me sideways with a smile and asked if I would prefer it if he come back with me to El Zonte?
This was too much. My voice rose as I said, “No! What are you thinking? Don’t you know how old I am and you have a girlfriend! Are you crazy?” He grinned at me sheepishly and apologized.
It had been a long day. Now I was fending off young men. I felt it was partly my fault as at one point while waiting for the bus, he asked me for a hug and I felt sorry for him. After an hour of talking he felt like one of my sons. I liked him and I complied and hugged him just like I would have hugged one of them. In some ways, I am incredibly naive and I feel strange like I am confessing something. Ahhh…more to work on there I am sure. It has to do with boundaries and pleasing people. It is still a thing. Growth is a process for sure and we’re all learning. Bless his little heart and bless me.
Which brings me to my real son. The day after my birthday, I was talking to him on the phone and mentioned that I had my first modeling job and thought I needed a new bathing suit. His eyes widened and he said, “They want you to wear a bathing suit?!” I know it came out fast before he thought about it. He quickly backpedaled and later said that if he had a sister, he would have said the same thing. I am not sure of that and it was both disconcerting and funny to me.
But, let’s get back to this story, shall we?
I still had to pick up the rest of my clothes from the hotel I found that had a washing machine and a dryer. They wanted me to pay extra because without my asking, they chose to wash some things by hand. God help me…
Finally, I got to my room with everything and I was ready for my adventure in the city.
In the morning, Guti, the photographer, texted me and told me what he wanted me to bring. I was very glad I had gone shopping. I spread my new clothes out on the bed and other things I had that I thought were still nice enough to use. Then I started sorting. It was like packing for an adventure.
Finally, I had piles of clothes lined up on my bed that had made the cut. I smiled. I was happy. My six year old self who loves to dress up was set to party.
I had scheduled a driver to pick me up early and I was ready, with my long hair washed and dripping. Guti said he would have someone come do light makeup and hair. That would be a new thing for me and I figured clean hair was important. It took a long time to accomplish my task as the shower in my upgraded room has pressure that is hardly enough to wash my body. I must have spent half an hour washing and rinsing my now-thick mane of long, wavy energy. Purple shampoo, good for silvery hair, foamed and collected around my feet. The shower didn’t drain well either and I was over exuberant with the shampoo. It slowed me down.
But I didn’t have to hurry because in the end, my driver was late. He told me there was some road work going on and he was stuck in traffic. The minutes ticked by slowly.
Half and hour later he finally arrived. He enjoys his cannabis and speaks a little like someone from a Cheech and Chong movie from the 1970s.
Relieved that he finally made it, I hurried out to the car. The thick, sultry air here can be luxurious and it also makes you sweat. Sweat that appears as wet patches on your clothes and body. I hoped he had air conditioning.
It turned out he did have AC but internet was another thing. That costs money and he spent the money on internet at home. So, despite marketing himself as a taxi, he had no access to google maps. He did offer to stop at gas stations on the way (which I guess provide internet to drivers here) to check how we were doing. Sigh. Directions were going to be on me. I asked if he had a cell phone charger in the car? I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me that he didn’t.
He was playing heavy metal on the radio while he told me about his great morning of cleaning and smoking cannabis. Then he started to try sell me on other taxi adventures we could go on in his country. Driving was his main income stream. He also makes soap. But driving, surfing, and cannabis smoking seem to be his main thing. It used to be bartending in Italy. But let’s not go into any more details. You get the idea.
I was trying not to sweat as the AC worked, but not well. Then, just as we crested a hill, smoke began to billow out of the engine. It was like the Cheech and Chong thing in the video above, except in this case, the smoke was outside the car.
I noticed the glove compartment in front of me had a large gap at the top and I thought it might be melting. I think he was in shock as he wondered out loud what was happening. I told him frantically I thought his engine was on fire and that we needed to pull over quickly. The potential for the glove compartment to explode in flames was making me nervous.
A few minutes later, we were on the side of the road and he had the hood open. Black smoke was billowing out in dense, acrid, stinky clouds. I tried to figure out where we were and called an Uber. The time for my modeling event was rapidly approaching and I was starting to sweat on the side of the freeway. He borrowed my phone to call his brother for help. I am unclear why his did not work, but I decided not to take time to try to make sense of it.
My Uber arrived quickly and as I rushed to meet it, I asked if we could figure out what I owed him later? It wasn’t going to work. I could see it as he looked into my eyes pleadingly and said he needed money for a taxi. So I grabbed a $20, thrust it towards him, and dove into the little battered silver Uber waiting for me.
It is a surprise to me that the Uber still managed to drop me off at Elieh and Iris’s condo 20 minutes early. Guti was going to do the photo shoot there.
I was in Escalon, one of the fancy parts of the city, gazing up at a multi-story building with no discernible entrance. There was a gated parking garage and something shaped like a door, in solid metal, with no handle. I had made it and I had no idea how to get in. I strolled around looking for a lobby and gave up. I texted Elieh and he told me to bang on the metal thing shaped like a door.
I knocked, and was admitted quickly by a security guard. He led me through the parking garage, and through another glass door behind the barricade, into a lobby. Then he pointed towards some elevators, and walked over and pushed the button for the eighth floor.
It was such a relief to finally arrive.
Elieh and Iris greeted me at the door. Their apartment was just as lovely as their house on the beach. It felt incredibly serene (especially after my day in the taxi).
There was a blue velvet sofa with matching chairs, a glass dining table, and similar glass walls that opened onto a balcony overlooking acres and acres of parkland and distant skyscrapers. The ceilings were high and the floors were cool and white. They felt good on my bare feet. People took off their shoes here and I was glad again, that I had shopped and was not leaving my Earth Runners next to the shoes on the rug near the door.
There were original paintings with similar blue accents decorating the walls. One was an abstract of a lion. We smiled at each other.
After I glanced around the room and gasped a little bit, they gave me a tour. It was a small condominium. It was the kind of place that I could live in, a place similar to what I imagined finding at some point as a little tether to the world in the most wonderful way.
It had a real washer and dryer, the front loading kind. In the bathroom there was no tiny trashcan next to the toilet. Here, you could flush the toilet paper.
We chatted comfortably for a few minutes and then everyone arrived. I imagined females when Guti told me there would be light makeup and hair so I was surprised when two very artistic, bubbly men walked in and approached me enthusiastically. One lifted a lock of my hair. They clucked around me like happy chickens commenting on my beauty. And I could feel it. They meant it. It was both wonderful and daunting.
They asked me to sit sideways on one of the blue velvet dining room chairs and they went to work. Makeup was first. The first man had a big smile and a shaved head. I am pretty sure he was wearing makeup. He informed me that soon he would be doing the makeup for the Miss Universe contestant from the US.
I choked internally. This was my makeup artist?
I have no mascara. I have no makeup remover. I really, despite having a great grandmother who was a Hollywood makeup artist, know very little about such things.
I thought about all this as he penciled my eyebrows and lined my lips. He told me to look up. I tried not to smile and he brushed things on my face, all the while clucking happily and bantering with the other people in the room.
Soon, it was time for hair and the muscles in my neck were challenged as mine was tugged and brushed, the blowdryer humming. I thought maybe they would want to do what I do, which is basically nothing other than putting some frizz tamer in it. I showed them a bottle I brought just in case and demonstrated by rubbing some in my hair. They smiled at me, ignored my suggestion, and went to work. They were artists.
I sat in the chair and took in my situation. The Miss Universe makeup man was doing my face. I was in a stunning apartment that felt relaxing. Some stunning places can be tense. You know what I mean? Like you have to be on your best behavior and somehow, the people who live there care more about money than feelings? This place was not like that. It felt good and friendly in addition to being beautiful. I listened to the chatter of the people around me and tried to hear Guti talking to Elieh and Iris about their respective companies in the kitchen. I felt my lack of experience with everything.
That is when the imposter syndrome kicked in.
Now, I have heard people speak of this, and honestly, mostly it irritates me. I have heard successful executives, both men and women, say that they suffer from imposter syndrome. And if you are wondering what it is, it is simply feeling like you don’t belong. Like you are not good enough to be in the room with the people around you. When I hear financially successful entrepreneurs speak of it, I scoff inside a little bit. Who are they to complain when they have created amazing businesses?
But here I was and I was feeling it. Elieh and his friends started a juice company and Guti created and is marketing a special lighting system that creates Vitamin D in the body and has a laundry list of other health benefits. Plus he is an amazing photographer and teaches on-line photography classes.
As I listened to them I said to myself, “Terra, Elieh likes you and you are probably here because he suggested you to Guti. Guti wants to work with him, so he said yes to having you come. This is about friendship and business. Otherwise, you certainly would not be sitting in this chair with two Hollywood-style happy artists dancing around you.”
Now, God, the Universe, or my angles…maybe all of it…were having none of that. It had taken them years to get me to this place to own my shit. The moment I had that thought, Guti strolled over and sat in a chair nearby to check on their progress. He smiled a little bit and said, “I am so glad you are here. You are exactly what I was looking for.” Then he started asking me about making an informational video to promote his product.
It happened so fast after my sabotaging thoughts, that I am sure it was not by chance. I took a breath. He actually really wanted me to do this.
While I was being primped, I asked Iris to take a picture of me as I wanted a record of the whole event. The artists erupted in protest. They did not want me to see myself until they were finished. Iris snapped a picture, but didn’t show it to me and soon, they were ready and pointed me to a mirror to see the result of their efforts.
Now, we must take a moment here. A tiny side journey as I need to explain something to you so you understand.
I was married 22 years and on our 20th wedding anniversary, I planned a trip to Europe with my husband. And by planned, I mean everything. I read travel guides, figured out an itinerary, booked hotels and connections. I crafted a trip that outwardly looked like celebrating 20 years of wedded bliss. The problem was that I was not happy and we were very disconnected.
At the same time I discovered the first book in the Twilight series. Those books are about vampires. Some vampires are human-killing, blood sucking, dangerous monsters. And some are “vegetarians” who live only off animals. Keto vampires, I guess.
Anyway, there is a lot of internal sexual attraction and tension in those books between a keto-vegetarian-vampire and the main character, Bella. Their relationship was pretty much the opposite of my lack of wedded bliss.
On our anniversary trip, my husband and I would often sit together with nothing to say. By then, the main thing we had in common to talk about was our kids and with so many days together, there was a limit to how frequently we could revisit the same topic before conversation became slightly desperate. The quiet of not talking was filled with tension. I would pick up my book and get lost in a story of lust and attraction.
I was lonely. The Twilight books filled a chasm in my heart and body. I devoured them. I started with the first book and by the time we had finished our trip, I had found an English version of each following title in tucked-away bookstores in various cities and forced them into my now hard-to-zip-closed Rick Steve’s backpack. It was so heavy, I could hardly carry it.
The main thing about why I tell you this is that there is a lack of real books here in El Salvador, in English, for me to read. My new friend, Sophie, likes books and I asked her if she had anything easy and fun to read. She did. It was Twilight, the first of that series. Desperate for some light reading, fourteen years later, I decided to revisit things.
Those vampires, the “vegetarian” ones, are beautiful. In the books (spoiler here so skip this paragraph if you don’t want to know), Bella, the main character, eventually becomes a vampire. In the process of this, she becomes exquisitely beautiful and glamorous.
So, in the condo, as I approached the mirror, with everyone watching with bated breath ready to hear my happy reaction, I saw myself and exclaimed, “Oh my gosh! I’m a vampire!”
I was so stunned, I wasn’t thinking about them. I just saw this person in the mirror who had been transformed into something otherworldly. My skin was a tiny bit lighter and it sparkled, just like Bella’s did.
I felt their immediate reaction wash over me and tried to quickly explain what I meant. The two hair and makeup men didn’t speak much English and I think they understood that despite my words, I liked what I saw; I was stunned by it.
Guti took photos of Elieh first and then he was ready for me. We started on the bed, with my face towards the light panel, just the way someone might choose to use it. I was relaxed and was having fun. I looked at that light panel like it was the lover I wished for all those years ago.
Later, in a new location in the living room, he took a photo of only my feet with the light panel shining on them and I breathed a sigh of happy relief. Thank God I got that pedicure. Somehow, the woman who re-did the paint on my toenail three times must have sensed this moment coming.
He also wanted a photo of me in a bathing suit in the bathroom, with the light shining on me. I brought two bathing suits. One is lovely, but the bottoms are starting to fall down. Either the tropical climate has made me thinner, or the sandy saltwater has stretched them out. It is probably a little of both. My other bathing suit was the new one I purchased the day before and had never worn. I asked him which to wear and he didn’t seem to care. He suggested a safety pin for the bottoms if I needed it and told me he was only taking a photo of the top of me anyway.
Somehow, I think Guti thought I had experience in modeling. Like I was someone who would come prepared with safety pins.
At one point, he told me to move my hands slowly while he photographed me (and said something about doing it the way I had been taught). I could have mentioned that a little education was welcome as it was my first time and it was a bit like admitting to being a virgin. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell him.
Overall, it was fun. I thought to myself that this was a day I would have paid to experience. I remembered that people do. In the past, some friends have shared their “glamor” photos with me. They paid to have their makeup and hair done and then to be photographed in a glamorous, unreal version of themselves. I would gasp at the photos and at the same time tell myself it wasn’t for me. I wanted to learn to love myself as I was.
Funny how this glamor day was helping me do just that.
By the end, I was really enjoying myself. I glanced at Guti, lying on the floor holding his camera, sweating as the camera clicked in my direction. In the city, things are cooler and there was a gentle breeze in the apartment wafting over me. The bed was comfortable. I hadn’t been on a bed that felt this comfy in years. There were also multiple lights and a non-yoga photographer-artist doing more yoga poses than either Elieh or me.
And he was compensating me monetarily. I was getting double practice in learning to receive.
Receiving money has been another thing that is hard for me. As I mentioned, in the end, I would have paid Guti for the gift of it all.
We finished and Guti had to run. The whole thing lasted much longer than the hour he told me it would, which was great for me. I wanted it savor everything.
Everyone was suddenly gone and I was ready to call an Uber when Elieh and Iris offered to feed me.
Really, the day couldn’t get much better.
It was strange to arrive home later. My Uber driver was sweet. On the drive back, he told me he was in the university studying math and engineering. I liked him. I practiced my Spanish a bit and tried to tell him the story about my curvy day filled with unexpected adventures and why I felt so pretty.
It was 9:30 at night by the time I entered the gate through the silky soft blackness of night, with my bag of clothes and creamy, woven purse slung over my shoulder. I kind of hoped some of my friends would still be awake outside and that I could show them my I-Dream-of-Jeannie hairstyle before it would be gone. But the hotel was still and peacefully empty. The surfers had gone to bed. The owner’s mother, Isabel, was the only one who was awake and she called up to me to turn out the lights on my way to my room.
It was over. And it was enough.
I wondered how I would get the makeup off and it washed off easily. I showered and put my clothes away. I took the pins out of my I-Dream-of-Jeannie pony tail and brushed my silky hair gratefully.
I figured in the end, I broke even on money and came out way, way ahead on life experience.
Not everybody gets a day to be a vampire or I-Dream-of-Jeannie. I will tell Lisa. It took time, and that list really did manifest something into reality.
Thanks for sharing Terra! It sounds like El Salvador is creating some great experiences for you. Ice baths to pony tails! I can’t wait to see what comes next 🙏❤️ Bless you!