Moving on...

It's a messy business growing up. Into your own skin. You start to dig internally to find the roots of where you started... and suddenly everyone wants to tell you what they didn't like about you, what they REALLY thought about you, their interpretation of who you were and what you represented and what's wrong with you now...and, my personal favorite, just how to fix it. I've been terrified to give up being that girl I worked so hard to create. I needed her to get through the divorce, the hysterechtomy, the crazy men (or men I made crazy), the weight loss, the weight gain, the post partum, the college, the bills, the parenting, and giant hole all of it left. They say you create your own reality. Didn't I try like hell :) It worked for a while and I learned a great deal about myself in the process...although now it's time to build something more substantial. To strip away the superficial armor I put up and really see how those wounds are healing. To decide to acknowledge the lines on my face, the stretch marks, the slightly larger frame and respect all of it instead of pretending I didn't go through any of it and hiding it frantically when anyone comes around. Enjoy the slowed down pace and the humming of the constant talk, criticism, yelling and just learn to tune it out. Even my dance has become inauthentic now. I don't dance from within to share my emotion any more. I dance to achieve technical perfection or to please people I've never met in hopes that they'll reassure me that I'm something. I am somebody. I didn't die somehow. Of course I never took into account that they're all in the same boat I am...the blind leading the blind, some slightly more aware than the rest of us. But we're getting there, one smack into the proverbial brick wall at a time. So it's time to take a step back and ask why. A good friend of mine gave me some simple and brilliant advice. Ask yourself...if I was the last person on earth....if NO ONE was around right now...would I still want to do this? For some, they'd say HELL YES I WOULD! Why would you do something you don't really want to do in the first place?!? They're a bit brighter than I am ;) My answer is often....well no. I suppose I wouldn't... but I feel like I should. Goddess forbid I expose myself as being me. Whatever would become of the world!?! ;) Anyhow, after a long day already I gave to much thought to what these people (not close friends mind you but coworkers or random people I've come into contact with) have said. That I try to hard. That I either don't or shouldn't like myself. That I feel to much or think to often. That I used to be so crazy and now I'm so calm and (cringe) normal now...It's time to step back and question why I can hear them in the first place...and how to begin drowning them out and rising above. I hold those I adore to impossible standards and look without to fulfill and inspire me instead of digging deep. So I'm a redneck who adores glitter and house music. I can make that fit somewhere. I'm a single mother...which is surpisingly rare (or so it would seem) in my circle of friends. Chances are...in this town? I'll find a few more in similar states of existance if I choose to look past the surface and really 'HEAR' people instead of trying to impress or fit in with them. Hell, I may even get brave enough to keep that Chris LeDoux cd blaring in the art district instead of frantically searching for that scrathched up tribal cd. It's time to let go of control and respect the woman in slightly less shape goofing around with her babies just as much as the sleek well polished performer I try so desperately to be instead. Two personalities, two lives, two sets of ideas and morals is just to damn much for any woman! Ladies? It's high time I grew a pair.... well... spiritually speaking anyhow. I'm going to need better music, more reading, less mirrors and a new pack of smokes.