Kids

 I have decided to write on here more often. Maybe more randomly, and maybe less relevantly. But maybe this is something I need to do.

Maybe someone will listen, follow. Maybe someone will need it as much as I do.

I am sitting on my bed making a crochet blanket, there are four dogs and a cat on my bed and I am writing. I guess this describes a pretty average evening for me. And maybe this is what I want to capture. Maybe I wish to be immortalised in a way.

I am ageing. I guess we all are. Every minute of every day, we age.

I feel like my life is accelerating. Sometimes it feels like I am becoming less relevant with every breath I take. And I think this is a factor of who I am.

I have chosen to remain single, for all sorts of reasons that are quite irrelevant right now, but I think when you do that, you become more introspective. When you are a couple, you include another person in your day to day living. Someone else becomes almost as important as you are. I haven't necessarily had that.

Every decision I have made for myself in the last 15 years has been pretty much my own.

I think this has given me a perspective on life that few others can be proud of.

I was browsing a book shop today. A rarity, but a delightful one at that.

And I was looking for a book that would tell me how to navigate this next step.

I used to always get parenting books out of the library when my kids were little. There were hundreds of them. I would digest them and implement the results into my own parenting style. I think I have done a pretty good job.

But there were no books on how to move on when you have explored all your life trauma, your kids are growing up and you find yourself single.

What the fuck do I do know? Am I still important? What is my role in my own life? I have always played a role. Like I've always had a job. I don't really know what my job is now. I feel like I have reached some sort of finish line, but I'm not finished.

What am I now?

A middle aged woman with loads of cats and dogs who still doesn't know who she is? That is insane.

So maybe I need to write that book. How to become a woman who is single and whose children have grown up. What legacy do I wish to leave? How do I want to proceed.

Let's find out.

I can't wait to see, because this is the book I need to read next.

Weird

 When I was growing up, all I wanted in the world was to fit in. I was the foreigner, forever the new kid, the weirdo. Not only was I in a different culture, but different language, and what felt like a different planet.

Fast forward 35 years, and I understand.

Weird is who I am. I am who I am. I don't enjoy TV, I don't follow trends, I'm the actual crazy cat and dog lady. But more than anything else, I realise that it really doesn't matter. Nobody gives a shit!!!

It is so refreshing to be middle aged. Nobody cares what you choose to do, nobody cares if you are indeed a weirdo. Life is yours to live, and what a delicious gift it would be to know this in our teens and twenties, even thirties.

Single mum and divorcee by 31 when expected to be a securely married professional with a nuclear family. By whose freaking parameters? The same middle aged weirdoes who are making it up as they go along?

Let's face it. We are all chasing the same mysterious intangible truth: happiness in a nutshell. And at the end of the day, happiness is what you decide it is for you. It's not having the fullest lips, or the slimmest figure, or the most romantic relationship. Those might all be ingredients in your ultimate happiness recipe. But at the end of the day, embracing your weirdo and knowing who you are is happiness.

My hair grew back so curly after my recent weight loss. It's almost as if my body knows that my personality is large and therefore my hair would reflect that, I should look how I feel.

What about we aim for that? Embracing the weirdo within, who we actually feel we are despite conventions and culture? Oooooooo, dangerous rebel.

Or realist?

We can be no less or more who we are.

I need to be a crazy cat and dog lady in order to be happy and comfortable within my skin. What do YOU need? Are you brave enough to acknowledge it and actually live that reality? What is stopping you? Is it that it's weird to be who you are? Does anyone ACTUALLY give a shit? Will you still love you?

I am happy just the way I am. I haven't found a true romantic partner to share it with.. Does that make me odd? Unlovable? Crazy? Maybe. But if I don't care, why should you? Have you ever walked in my actual shoes? Do you really know who I am? Because I do. I genuinely do, after a LONG time of soul searching. And no one else has that intimate knowledge.

Be brave, be you. Be weird. Or not! Be conservative, unique, mainstream. Whatever the fuck you choose to be. Because at the end of the day, that's okay.