It's Fun to Have Choices / I Get to ....

I was pretty excited to write about the conundrum of getting on self-acceptance like it’s my job while still engaging in a gauntlet of beautification processes to get ready for my friend’s fortieth birthday party, which may entail, among other things, wearing a swimsuit in the presence of strangers. Excited because I’m a little unresolved about how I feel about it. Then I read the poem Only Breath by Rumi and remembered it’s all really okay. It takes some work to achieve the look of having woken up this way, especially since lately I haven’t been maintaining anything. I've been going around the way I actually wake up. I don’t repulse myself, but it’s people from LA and New York at this shindig and there’s a different level of polished-ness in those cultures. I want to be respectful I suppose, like doing it up properly for a tribal ritual.

What’s nice is I don’t have to do it, any of it. I don’t even have to go. I get to go. I’m excited to go, and I’m excited to get to primp and enhance and shine myself up for it. I’m not looking to impress, I’m looking to connect. It’s okay.

But it’s weird to think about all the years I did this stuff on the regular. Like years of not knowing what my natural hair color was, or thinking unpainted toenails were ugly, or plucking my eyebrows so thin that I always looked a little surprised. This weekend I won’t be near the glossiest gal in the pack, and that’s cool. But I get to be in the pack, and that’s cool too. It’s fun to have choices.