IT IS NEW CLOSET DAY. We have this oddly shaped closet upstairs in our old Chicago Cape Cod style house that has been impossible to work with so we finally called in experts and there is a man up there right now fixing all my life problems. Well worth the money. This is what’s exciting at 44 years old.
For my birthday, I got a couple checks from my parents and my in-laws and immediately bought myself some fancy red low-heeled clogs that I’ve been wanting forever to complement my new fuck-it-forties look. This pleases me.
Girth. Heft. Weight. The way it feels to sit with myself and feel.
Some of you may always have been able to do this, but as someone who has not, it feels significant. It feels worthy of celebration.
What’s often interpreted as not caring, is actually caring a whole hell of a lot, but choosing to not participate. Or sometimes it really is just not having room to care for that particular brand of gossip or tearing people apart anymore.
I don’t have a lot of fucks left for stupid shit. Practically none.
I’ve got no use for assholes who discriminate.
I’ve got no use for mansplaining. I’ve got no use for whitesplaining. I’ve got no use for parentsplaining.
I’m smack in the middle of the fuck-it-forties and it’s exactly where I’ve been wanting to be my whole life.
I don’t have enough money or time, so I ignore those facts and act as if they don’t matter.
What matters is this, today.
That said,
I let my kids play on ipads and iphones too often.
I turn on the tv to calm them down when I cannot manage one more second of jumping on the couch.
I lose my temper and raise my voice more than I’d like to admit.
I feed them more junk food than I should. But then I always feel better about myself when I feed them a smoothie full of good shit.
Then we walk and play and walk and play and walk and play. It’s my favorite.
I smother them and watch them test out their independence and then come back to be smothered yet again.
May they always come back.
My bottom is wide – ever widening – and I really, I mean really, just don’t care.
I turn 44 in a couple days and I also bought my first bikini in about a decade. I purposely put that sentence in after the ever widening bottom part.
I’ve got cellulite and twin skin and scars and my girls hang ever lower and yet, I have this confidence that I never could’ve dreamed of in my twenties or even thirties.
I have this disdain for intolerance that makes me want to distance myself with just a whiff of it in my direction.
I have more solid relationships in my life than I’ve ever had, even though some come and go. When they are here, they are calm and they are mutually beneficial to our collective well-being. Nobody ever said you’d be friends with people for a lifetime. Sometimes it is only for this moment, and that’s beautiful.
I have more wrinkles and fat and weird marks on my body than I ever have and yet I’m healthier on the inside than I’ve ever been.
I have more time to sit and listen to my kids now that they want to suss things out. Since I’m not chasing them around and hoping they don’t fall in a hole in the ground, I have the luxury of a few more minutes time to just listen to them. The things they say….
Right now as I write this, they have been playing out in the backyard sandbox for over an hour without incident. I know something will erupt soon, but this is glorious.
Bebe had a toy taken away today for circumstances we won’t go into. She was so sad and fighting me on it but then took a beat and said, “ok well will you make sure she’s cozy with you tonight until I earn her back tomorrow?”
This damn rollercoaster of parenting emotions. They’re learning empathy and compassion and regret and their dad and I are so very proud it hurts. I often wonder, and then something like that happens, and well, damn it’s reassuring.
I have this love, this big love, like a gd house, that I want to shower on people who never ever get to feel what that kind of love feels like. I want to wrap it around them like a blanket. I want my kids to be recipients and givers of that love.
I had a friend say recently that she was mediocre at best. And while there were several of us heaping praise on her as she is worthy of it, she maintained her position.
I can respect that.
I am not the best at what I look like, sound like, write like, mom like. I am mediocre at best. And because I’m mediocre at best, I get to be the best at being mediocre. And that suits me just fine.
Striving to be the best makes me tired and I have too much to do – too many people to love – to be so tired. Am I messy with my love? Yes. Undeniably. But I also would wager to say anybody under my blanket knows. They know.
Fuck it – I’m going to eat (more) bed pie, because if I can’t have bed pie than what’s the point, really?
Fuck it – I’m going to cut my hair short as hell.
Fuck it – I’m getting (already got) a high-waisted bikini. After last year’s skirted swimsuit joy. I CAN DO BOTH.
Fuck it – I’m wearing leggings as pants whenever I damn well please.
Fuck it – I’m going to watch Parks and Rec YET AGAIN because I can’t seem to handle much else.
Fuck it – I am saying no and that is a complete sentence.
Fuck it – I’m going to keep adding to this book pile from my Fairy Book Mother Samantha and read everything she tells me to read because she knows.
Fuck it – I am keeping these HATE HAS NO HOME HERE signs up forever and if I alienate people in my neighborhood, that’s on them because DUH HATE HAS NO HOME HERE.
Fuck it – I am not going to the gym again today that is in the sears tower where I work and I get a reminder every single day to GO TO THE GD GYM but I hit dismiss every single day since January 1.
Fuck it – I am going to see Alanis Morissette with Jenn Anne to kick off my birthday because she’s been with me through it all and I have huge gratitude for her. I WILL BE SCREAMING AND CRYING.
Fuck it – I am going to keep showing love and mercy and grace to people who don’t necessarily deserve it.
Fuck it – I am.
I’m smack in the middle of the fuck-it-forties and it’s exactly where I’ve been wanting to be my whole life.
I never thought I would make it this far. Alive and sober in my mid-forties. I never thought I would be here. In these clogs and leggings, yet here I am, dammit. Great big gratitude abounds.
I wrote this one last year for my birthday, and it’s still absolutely where I am today, even more so – 40-something women: Lend me your previously pierced in several places ears
Too Sober For This 