Page 3 of What It Means To Be Found

ELOISE

“I don’t understand why women want to look like that.” My mother scrunched her nose at the picture I was showing her, making disappointment flood my stomach at her words. I shouldn’t have been surprised by her comment, and yet, here I was. I guess because I had been putting in the work the last few years to become a better version of myself, I forgot that my mother simply, well, hadn’t.

“What’s wrong with how she looks?” I dropped my smile, something that felt a little unnatural to me still, as I pulled my phone back to look at the image of Courtney Henderson that I was showing her. Courtney had just posted a picture of herself on her social media page, a page that had significantly more followers since she and Joshua Madey, the lead singer of the most popular punk rock band in the world, got engaged.

“What man wants their woman to look so muscular? She’s losing her natural femininity by doing that to herself.” My mother sipped her tea as she explained, eyeballing the newspaper in front of her. That’s right, a real newspaper. Not an article on her phone or e-reader. My mother literally still read the newspaper.

I silently scolded myself for even bothering with her.

I had simply seen my friend post a picture of herself at the gym and wanted to share it. She was wearing black exercise shorts and a sports bra, and was posing in the mirror for a selfie, her body turned so you could see her profile, and flexing her now-defined four-pack abs. She had been exercising more intentionally for almost two years now, and I was proud of her for reaching her goals to become stronger. She still looked feminine to me. Her ass was tight and lifted, and her breasts were still bigger than mine.

I didn’t bother explaining to my mother that one of the most sought-after men, by women everywhere, was engaged to her. That the man who held the gaze of most women in the world had his sights set on Courtney and had every intention of locking her down.

“You’re assuming that her goal is to get the attention of men.”

“You’re right,” she glanced up at me with a small smile, making me blink in surprise at her quick agreement, “She clearly isn’t. She probably just likes attention from likes and comments.” My mother shook her head once, as if her assumptions about Courtney weren’t ridiculous and that she was one hundred percent right in her interpretations.

As if exercising simply to hit your own goals was silly.

As if not giving a damn about what other men thought of your body was equally ridiculous.

This was yet another domino to fall for me, and many had fallen over the past couple of years.

I had been living at home with my parents in their beachside home in Dana Point, California. I moved back in with them after my ex-boyfriend, Adam Hall, dumped me. I was in denial about the breakup at first because we seemed like the perfect match on paper. Our families were close. We had grown up together. A part of me had even beamed at the fact that the cute red-headed boy who was a grade ahead of me in high school ended up falling for me as an adult. It was the dream every teenager had whenever their high school crush didn’t reciprocate during their high school years.

We dated for about a year.

Then Adam had a serious bout with depression, which resulted in him tanking his Olympic surfing career, breaking up with me, and starting a new job working with special needs children as a Physical Therapist.

Both of our mothers had come to me to help me try to win him back, which I was all about. My ego was hit by our breakup. I had become too comfortable with our relationship, even though it had been pretty surface-level now that I looked back on it. I was able to figure that out quickly once Adam started dating one of his co-workers, Beck Scott. She was a speech therapist at the same early intervention clinic he worked at.

They fell in love and had been together for the last couple of years. Beck had even moved into Adam’s condo recently. They were clearly it for each other, and I still felt like an asshole every now and then for trying to win Adam back when the reality was, I didn’t actually like him for him. I just liked the idea of us together.

I was growing, though. I knew I had a lot of work to do on myself, and that was mostly thanks to Courtney, Beck, and Taylor. I had seen their friendship during a company retreat that I had helped organize a few years ago (you know, back when I was trying to win Adam back but he was clearly head over heels for Beck and I was blind to it), and I realized that their bond was so special and unique. Their friendships with each other were so comfortable and achingly honest.

I wanted that.

I may have not so discreetly weaseled myself into their little social circle, blatantly ignoring how awkward it must have been for Adam to have his ex-girlfriend become part of his friend group at work.

I even went as far as to start working at the same early intervention clinic as all of them, even though my parents didn’t understand why I felt the need to get a job like that. I wanted a nine-to-five. I wanted to work consistently and build up my own income so that I didn’t need to rely on my parents or their trust fund for the entirety of my life.

This brunch with my mother was making me happier about that choice, as she said way too much in the few words that she had spoken to me since seeing that picture of Courtney.

“Well, anyways,” I cleared my throat, determination only making the fear I felt slightly dissipate, “I wanted to let you know that I am moving out.”

My mother set her tea mug down and looked at me with raised blonde eyebrows. We looked so much alike, my mother and me. I was always referred to as her “Mini-Me” by her and her friends. We both had light blonde hair that only became paler during the summertime, clear blue eyes, and small frames. The only difference was that I had a slight smattering of freckles over my nose, and she didn’t.

Last year I chopped my hair shorter and kept it that way. It hovered just above my shoulders, and I loved how little maintenance it took to take care of now. My mother hated it, frowning when she first saw the spontaneous cut. She had never let me cut my hair too short as a child, saying that it was too pretty to destroy like that.

I realized last year that I was a grown-ass woman in her late twenties and that I could do whatever the fuck I wanted.

That wasn’t the only alteration I had made to my appearance. I also had three beautiful tattoos. One under my breast along my left ribcage, one on my right hip that went down my thigh halfway, and one on my right forearm. They were all bouquets of flowers. Was it a basic white girl design? Yes, but I loved flowers. I had also discovered that I weirdly loved getting tattoos, and I loved having visual art on my body. They didn’t have any special meanings, I simply thought they were pretty and found a woman tattoo artist I had felt comfortable with to design them.

My mother also hated that, stating that I would need a foundation to cover up my tattoos whenever I attended formal fundraising events that she and the Halls put on. I agreed, knowing I would find an excuse to simply never attend those events. It has worked out so far.

“Why?” my mother asked, a slight downturn to her lips making me pull out of my thoughts. “Is something wrong with your space?”

“No,” I shook my head as I stalled by sipping my own tea, “I just think it’s time for me to, well, no longer live with my parents again. I appreciate you guys helping me out so much.” I smiled. My fake smile, the smile that Beck had once told me made her convinced that butterflies would shoot right out of my ass the first time we met. That memory still made me giggle sometimes.

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