I didn’t know for a long time. Or rather, I felt like I needed to perhaps apologize for who I was. Like me being me was a grand let down to others. I always felt, until recently, that I should be more of some things, and less of others. What I lacked the most was an ability to just be who I was and have that be ok with me. I always felt like I needed to be something other than who I was. And that was a weird way to live in the world...
Looking back it was a subtle violence against myself. If I couldn’t love and accept me, who the fuck else was going to? My mom. She has always loved me in all my various forms. She has always accepted me even though we are different and I think, at times, she gravely questions my judgment. Like, she doesn’t get the tattoo thing at all. She doesn’t judge me for it, she just doesn’t get it. And that is ok. I do not need her approval on that. I do need her approval that I am a good human, mother and daughter, but the rest of me, I feel like I am good with just my own opinion.
One of my best girlfriends is throwing me a birthday party this weekend. First of all, I love her for doing this. For remembering. She has a lot going on and me being a priority on her radar makes me feel so loved. The women in attendance will be women I have known for some time, women I have more recently met and a couple that are brand new to me. And I am so excited to be honored in this way. I love them all. Even the ones I don’t know very well yet. I love them because the other women love them and so I love them by proxy until I come to know them well enough to love them more directly.
Women events used to stress me out if I am honest. So much pressure to be you, but not too much, and not too little. And the fucking competition! Who is the better homemaker, mother, lover, friend. It is like walking into a lion’s den for fuck’s sake. I have largely hated these things for the entirety of my life. Mostly because they always made me feel so lacking in my womanness. I always felt like too much or too little and never enough.
This feeling was largely why I chose to be friends with men which I just learned is a red flag for guys that might want to date you. Apparently, if you have a lot of guy friends this means (or can mean because it doesn’t in my case) that you sleep with your friends. And of all the male friend groups I have had, I swear they have been friends, no funny business. I just preferred the company of men over women because they were easier. They did cooler things and I enjoyed not having to be so self conscious about how manly my version of woman was honestly. I could just be me and it was ok. I didn’t compare and despair. The guys loved me and seemed to accept me for who I was. Women were far more treacherous, historically speaking of course.
But not the girlfriend group of the birthday party. I like them all. I do not feel threatened by them and I trust that they do not talk smack about me when I am not there. I am me and they just accept and love me for it...even though I am irreverent, outspoken, profane and quite unladylike most of the time. They still just are ok with me being me and they do not make me feel like I should be less of this or more of that. It is an interesting mix. Most of them married, a couple single but coupled. I am almost always the one who is perpetually single. And this used to make me feel less than. Until I realized that I could be coupled if I wanted to. And it isn’t that I don’t want to, it is I just don’t couple easily. It is hard for me to find someone who doesn’t drive me nuts, I desire and trust. So it is easier to go it solo. And they accept this about me too.
I have a couple of girlfriend groups like this. Circles of women who I love that love me back and I feel ok in my own skin. Finally having learned that if I am in a group of women who make me feel anything less than good, it is a group I need to jettison immediately. And that is ok. I am not somehow less of this woman thing because I swear, am “edgy”, irreverent and outspoken. I have permission, from myself, to be who I am and have that be ok. I no longer have to shave off parts of myself that don’t fit the “club”.
So as this rather large birthday number rolls around, I am feeling pretty content with who I am and where I am in this life. It isn’t that everything is perfect. No, it is far from that. But I am happy with who I am and that makes all the fucking difference in this world, this life and how I live it.
What I find most perplexing is that I am not sure when it happened. When did I find this level of self awareness and acceptance? Was it only this last year? Has it been building for some time? When did I arrive at this place where I no longer feel like I have to apologize for my own existence and how I show up?
I am not sure really. I just know this is how I feel. I am ok in this skin, this body, this mind and the outward manifestations are all good too. Not for some people surely. And I am grateful that I no longer work so hard to maintain relationships with people who really don’t like me at all. I know it may sound weird but in the last three years I have walked away from all my female relationships that didn’t like me. I know, I know, why the fuck was I friends with people who didn’t like me? Co-dependency. Fear. A desperate need to belong to something and feel like I am loved and supported.
But somewhere along the line, I woke up and realized that what I was doing was only producing the illusion of that, not the reality. Some of those people cared about me, some absolutely just resented me but kept me close because I think they enjoyed making me feel shitty about myself. And I won’t even go into the perilous scandal of my last relationship...which doesn’t even really deserve to be ranked in the relationship category. It was really more of a hostage situation, except I could have left the whole time, I just couldn’t as all the good things about me were being used to make me feel like leaving was this absolute betrayal. Anyway, that is a story for another day (actually I have already written about that and so feel no need to rehash that particular dumpster fire again - if you want to know about it, you are gonna have to read backwards and find it. I am all done with that!).
Today, I know who I am. I know that I am not everyone’s cup of tea. That women often take an instant disliking to me. That I often feel like I am too much and too little all at the same time. That belonging to a friend group feels like a certain death to me. Like that is the place I as an individual go to die. I know, that is dramatic but that is how I usually feel.
But not this girlfriend group. I feel like they appreciate me for who I am. They celebrate my accomplishments. They love me for who I am even though my brand of womanhood looks almost nothing like theirs. I guess more than anything else, I feel accepted for who and what I am without all the usual pressure I feel to conform to their mutually agreed female standards.
So the birthday gift I inadvertently gave myself this year is this absolutely amazing fucking gift of self acceptance across the board. I am good the way I am...and I can always use a little work. I do not need to be less of this or more of that. I am just me and that is finally, unequivocally ok.
I swear I never knew it was an inside job but I have proven that truth to myself repeatedly. It was never “them”. It was always me. Me that didn’t fit in. Me that didn’t feel ok. Me that felt like I didn’t belong. And sometimes, the groups I selected to join absolutely reinforced that feeling. But I am clear now, that I am the one that kicked it off. I am the one that felt less than. And so I was treated in accordance with that belief.
Today I no longer hold that low opinion of myself. I am not there doing that and so I allow no one else to do it either. I am ok, being me and loving her with all her flaws, imperfections and awkwardness. I am a fucking delight! Well, perhaps more of an acquired taste.
I am so looking forward to my party this weekend. I am exited to spend time with women I admire, respect, love and am getting to know. They are good women and I have a place at their table. My place. And this year I can own it without the attendant feelings of grief, strife and stress. They will be them and I will be me and it will all just be a beautiful unfolding of female friendship, love and support. And I am grateful. Grateful for them. Grateful to not have the female friendships I used to have. And grateful that I am finally, really, ok in the skin I am in.
I guess this year I lose the long standing idea that I am not worthy, that I am too much or too little and just take my seat as me. No explanations, no apologies and no campaigns to get others to grant me permission to be me. And I don’t want to trade places with anyone anymore. Which is a fucking gift of amazing proportions! Because once upon a time I would have traded lives with anyone, life unseen. That is how much I didn’t like me. That is how much I didn’t accept me. That is how much I lived in a world where I was lost, mostly to myself. And today, I am very fucking grateful that I do not live in that world.
Again...still. And also not again and not still. This year feels different. And that is perhaps the best gift one can give themselves, radical self acceptance and some loving kindness to the you that is constantly in a state of elevation, change and growth. Riding the tide of yourself finally after a lifetime of surfing everyone else’s waves. Finally having the bravery and metal to ride my own, without explanation, apologies or the need to justify.
Fuck, I have to say it feels fucking amazing! Yay me!
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