red hair – Muddled Soma

365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 6 - First Crushes and First Heartbreaks

Orbiting April – Day 52

February 15, 2026February 16, 2026 ljandkari1 Comment

Prompt – Your Earliest Crush

April was her name. I was twelve. She was beautiful, or at least the memory of her is, softened by distance and the way time edits what it can no longer hold. Her father was a TSgt, and they lived a few houses down from us on Plattsburgh Air Force Base, close enough that it was easy to accidentally run into her when I wanted. Her mother looked like an older echo of April, same features but worn thinner, as if life had pressed its thumb into her for too long. Years of folding a life into cardboard boxes every eighteen months had settled into the lines of her face. Some military wives learned how to pack without leaving bruises behind. She never quite did.

April and I went to the same junior high school but did not have any of the same classes together. I had to see her around the neighborhood if I wanted to see her. I saw her at the bus stop. I saw her when I went to her house to collect payment for the newspaper that month. I saw her when I was walking to the South Side Trails to hang out with the boys. I saw her often; she never saw me.

My crush on April looked like an orbit. I circled her life quietly, measuring my day by the chance of passing through her gravity. I practiced conversations in my head that never left my mouth. I changed the speed of my bike when I thought she might be outside. I learned the dance of pretending not to care while caring so much it felt like a fifty pound secret I carried in my chest.

I do not remember a single real conversation between us. What I remember is the anticipation of a conversation, the sharp awareness of my own body whenever she was near, and the sudden self-awareness about my red hair, about weight, about how to stand or where to put my hands. But, alas, nothing. It was not like she was not cruel. She was simply living her own best twelve-year-old life, and I was learning the quiet math of a one way conversation.

My crush on April never really began or ended; it just faded the way base housing always did, quietly replaced by the next season of trying to belong somewhere. The invisibility was not new. I had been practicing it long before her. She just gave it a face I could not ignore. Looking back now, I laugh a little at that twelve-year-old version of me pedaling past her house like it meant something cosmic. Jesus Almighty. I thought one girl noticing me might repair everything that felt unfinished inside my chest. It was never about April. It was about a boy who wanted proof that he existed outside his own head. The truth is harsher and cleaner now. Nobody arrived to make me whole. I learned to stand there, unseen, and open anyway.

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365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 5 - Body, Identity, and Change

Not a Replica, Just an Edit – Day 44

February 7, 2026February 13, 2026 ljandkariLeave a comment

Prompt – Something you secretly liked about how you looked.

I spent most of my childhood avoiding pissing people off and staying small and out of the way, and this included staying out of the way of myself. After Alaska, mirrors were no longer friends as I was now “husky,” as the adults called it. I wanted to disappear inside my body that seemingly refused to cooperate. My carrot top red hair walked into the room before I did. Adults called it distinctive. Kids made fun of that distinction. Still, if I am being honest, I secretly liked my hair, just not the color.

It was thick and styled well. There was no strange cowlick that other kids had to use water, gel, and frustration to tame. My hair always cooperated. It feathered and fell into place without much effort, the kind of easy that felt unfair compared to how hard everything else seemed. I complained about the color, but damn, at least it had possibility. Even under certain light it shifted, less fire and more copper, almost calm. My hair belonged to me and not to the people doing the teasing. That realization felt like a small act of rebellion, the kind that stayed hidden in plain sight with a subtle middle finger to all. I hated the attention of my carrot top, but I still appreciated the way my hair moved when I turned my head. That contradiction lived quietly inside me, a private agreement that I would never admit out loud.

My nose was also a feature I secretly liked, but for a different reason. It was not the sharp line and hard angle of my father’s nose. My nose curved differently. There was no harsh slope, no rigid echo of authority staring back at me from the mirror. As a tween and teen, the mirror confirmed that I was not a replica of my father. I was an edit. Hope lived in that small difference. Liking my nose meant I did not have to inherit everything. I could carry pieces forward and leave others behind. That thought stayed with me longer than any insult about my hair ever did.

There were moments when I stood longer than necessary in front of a mirror, dissecting my reflection. I would pretend to adjust something that did not need fixing, knowing I was really searching for proof that I belonged, if nowhere else, at least to myself. I did not feel confident about who I was, but I was damn sure curious about who I was not becoming. Maybe that was the beginning of rebellion; not loud or reckless, just a slow refusal to disappear. Even when I tried to stay small, parts of me kept stepping forward first, red hair and all, as if they already understood what I was still learning; that becoming someone new does not begin with change, it begins with noticing the pieces that were quietly mine all along.

365 Day Coming of Age Prompt Project/Theme 5 - Body, Identity, and Change/Uncategorized

Ginger, Interrupted – Day 43

February 6, 2026February 12, 2026 ljandkariLeave a comment

Prompt – Something about your appearance you struggled with.

I hated my red hair as a kid. My parents always framed it like it was a blessing, as though it was some strange cosmic DNA secret upgrade that unlocked every fourth generation. They said it was rare. They said it made me memorable. They said it like I was chosen; however, I felt as though I was exposed because kids never called it rare. Kids could see my flaming red hair and used it as target practice.

Carrot Top. Big Red. Fire starter. Every nickname made sure I knew I was different. Houses changed often in the military with new classrooms and new people, but the insults never were new because the hair stayed the same. Somehow those that slung the insults thought they were original poets that uttered the insult at me first. Not the brightest bulbs in the pack, but still difficult to ignore.

Like most gingers, my skin sure as hell did not help matters. I was pale in a way that felt almost unfinished, like I had been sketched and colored in by the white Crayola crayon. Twenty-four seconds in the sun turned me into a walking warning label for future skin cancer prevention. Freckles multiplied overnight and merged together like some ancient protection rune drawn across my face and shoulders. Adults called them cute angel kisses. I called them evidence that a host of angels took a shit all over me.

There were moments I tried to negotiate with my red hair and fair skin. They always won. So I found myself standing just out of reach of direct sunlight. I watched other kids tan into some version of confidence that felt foreign to me. I was either white or lobster, a permanent contrast against whatever landscape I happened to live in that season. I wanted invisibility more than anything. I wanted to look like everyone else long enough to walk through a hallway without hearing insults.

Time did what time does. It softened some edges, sharpened others, and still others faded. Somewhere between leaving childhood and stepping into adulthood, the hair I tried to outrun began to feel less like a spotlight and more like a marker as it faded into auburn. It carried the memory of “carrot top” with it, but it turned out to be a good color. The freckles stopped feeling like a flaw and started to feel like a map of where I had been.

I still catch my reflection sometimes and see the kid who wished for darker hair, darker skin, anything that might let him disappear into the background noise of a hallway. He thought blending in would make him safe. He thought invisibility meant peace. What he did not know was that standing out would one day become a quiet kind of permission. The thing that made me feel exposed also trained my eyes to notice the other kid carrying something visible they never asked for. Different hair. Different language. Different body. Same feeling.

The red faded into auburn over time, softer at the edges, less fire and more ember. The freckles stopped feeling like a flaw and started to feel like coordinates, small constellations mapping where I had been rather than where I failed to belong. I stopped negotiating with the mirror. I stopped trying to outrun a color that had already outrun me.

I hated my red hair for years. Now it feels less like an accident and more like handwriting. Not a super power. Not a curse. Just a mark that stayed when everything else kept moving. And maybe that is what growing up really is. Learning that the parts of me I tried hardest to erase were never asking to be loved loudly. They were only asking to be allowed to stay.

Tag: red hair