I turned 46 yesterday, and it was my palindrome birthday. As I’ve wandered through a strange time of rest and celebration (my daughter turned 21, and as I looked across the crowd at her party, I remembered that I certainly know how to throw a party, with the help of our community), I’ve been reminded that I’m…
Living. Free.
There’s been no great epiphany or anything, just a simple settling of my soul into…living free.
Living free of intimate relationships, yet experiencing zero loneliness.
Living free of expectations, yet so very aware of the ones I set for myself, and learning to be gentle with myself when I do not necessarily reach them.
Living free of being bundled under the boot of disappointment, and learning how to simply change my experience.
Living free of definition. Like, you would need actual diagrams to truly understand how I live, what my family looks like, and…well, if you know me only from the Internet, you do not know me at all. I do enjoy reading the sometimes insane assumptions that people make about me. I’m not a tall person, for example, but I give off that energy online. I laugh at assumptions. And then I keep on living.
Perhaps that’s been the most healthy change, second only to my sobriety.
Sobriety hasn’t been hard for me. It was a decision made for myself, which grows in abundance every day. Thankfully, I’m not about to start preaching to people at bars, because I’m still quite comfortable in those familiar spaces. I’m just simply sipping a Heineken Zero instead.
I used to have this terrible fear of living free. As though it would run out of steam and I would somehow be trapped into something – some circumstance or situation that would suffocate me.
Instead, I have found my actual truest self…celebrated. As I sit here in the stillness of an evening that feels rich and indulgent, it is indeed, again, just me, my tea, the fresh air of almost midnight, and my tippy tapping at the keyboard again.
Every day, I’m dancing again. I’m snuggling in tight. I’m swinging my arms wide.
And, while I am still relearning how to trust beyond myself, I am learning to trust myself again.
She is me, and she is living free.
Finally.