Hellbent on reinvention

I get flustered when I drop things. Which makes me drop more things.

I still go straight to a self-loathing place when I'm (physically) awkward in public. I feel like I take up too much space, and find myself apologizing when other people elbow me on the bus.

I'm thinking more and more about what a new not-desperate me might look like, what's left if I strip away all the attempts to be useful and accommodating, what's underneath the tense feeling in my chest that tells me each new person might be the very last person I'll ever be friends with and so I should do everything in my power to try to make them like me?

I want more elegance of motion, of thought. I want to have more occasions to use the word exquisite. Which isn't to say that I don't want my messy enthusiasms, my slavish devotion to my husband, my beliefs about pet ownership and literacy, whatever other strengths I have at the moment. But I'd really like to stop counting the losses and start counting the wins.

My therapist asked me how I was doing today and my immediate response was "belligerently happy." I'm standing by that. I'm feeling a little of the "take me as is or not at all" fire, and I'd love to find a way to be that woman without any of the angry bits, without believing the answer will always be not at all.

Next step: more tattoos.

Hellbent on reinvention

I get flustered when I drop things. Which makes me drop more things.

I still go straight to a self-loathing place when I'm (physically) awkward in public. I feel like I take up too much space, and find myself apologizing when other people elbow me on the bus.

I'm thinking more and more about what a new not-desperate me might look like, what's left if I strip away all the attempts to be useful and accommodating, what's underneath the tense feeling in my chest that tells me each new person might be the very last person I'll ever be friends with and so I should do everything in my power to try to make them like me?

I want more elegance of motion, of thought. I want to have more occasions to use the word exquisite. Which isn't to say that I don't want my messy enthusiasms, my slavish devotion to my husband, my beliefs about pet ownership and literacy, whatever other strengths I have at the moment. But I'd really like to stop counting the losses and start counting the wins.

My therapist asked me how I was doing today and my immediate response was "belligerently happy." I'm standing by that. I'm feeling a little of the "take me as is or not at all" fire, and I'd love to find a way to be that woman without any of the angry bits, without believing the answer will always be not at all.

Next step: more tattoos.