Loving Ourselves Exactly Where We Are
This is it. This is forty-seven.
Last year, I said I was closer to fifty than to forty, but this birthday hit me harder than I thought it would. Forty-seven.
The only way to tackle the emotions behind the inevitable is to say it out loud. Live proud. Don’t hide. And admit those who may have thought I was turning thirty-seven (surely, some of you are out there) were wrong.
I told a dear friend of mine that I wanted ten years back. This woman… I had a huge crush on her when was nineteen. She’s one of my best friends today, so many years later. Age thirty-one the time I danced to Melissa Etheridge in a lame attempt to seduce her with the word teen still in my age, she is one amazing friend who will never allow me to consider complaining about age. I told her to forget all the other gifts, though I appreciate them all, I want ten years back. Actually, if it wouldn’t be too much to ask, I’d like to ask for fifteen. But I also need to make some important stipulations with those years.
I’d like to keep the love I have today… I don’t want to go back to when I was thirty-two – I had a one year old then. Please don’t send me back to seven years of sleepless nights and lonely parenting with the constant yearning for the ability to share the darkest of moments with someone who cared. I’d also like to hold onto all the wisdom I’ve accumulated over the years. The understanding of what truly matters, the knowledge of empowerment beyond the gaslighting I lived through, those powers are mine. They came with the fifteen years I’d like back. I’m not asking for a reset. I don’t want the goodbyes and heartaches that came with those years. I do want the life lessons. So, maybe I don’t want to be thirty-two again; maybe I want ten more years in this mid-life. Please don’t tack on an extra ten at the end of my life… put them here. Right here. Where things are good. Where, at almost fifty… fuck … I’m making things happen that I never had the confidence to make happen. I’m doing things I never had time to do because the idea that I chose to leave a career and be a mom was thrown at me for years.
Man, it would be awesome if I were doing this in my thirties.
But the reality is, I am forty-seven now. I am hopelessly in love. As a purveyor of words, hopelessly doesn’t seem to fit, but it’s true. There is no going back. This woman was custom made for me, and that’s that. She’s pieces of every woman I’ve ever loved wrapped up in one amazing body, beautiful mind, and sense of humor that gets my own and feeds my mind with thought provoking insights and challenges. I am giving and receiving love in ways I’ve never given or received before, and it’s the most amazing thing ever. When I get my ten – or fifteen because go big or go home – years back, I want her with me – exactly where she is. You see, that’s the incredibly cool thing about love. It’s not just about the perfect fit. It’s about fitting together exactly where we are. Me at thirty wouldn’t have made it work with her in my world back then – even if she had been thirty too.
Loving ourselves exactly where we are impacts our lives more than many of us are willing to admit. I have another dear friend of mine I try to talk to at least once a week. She’s about seven years older than I am… look, ladies, keep some older women in your immediate circle because they will absolutely keep it real and knock your ass down at the exact moment you need it. And, you’ll thank them for it. This beautiful, amazing friend of mine has been in a world of hurt for some time now. She’s on a roller coaster where she feels good, then starts to go slowly up that hill she knows will pull her down faster than she can catch her breath. There are times she wallows in what should have been. She should be married. She should have retirement set up with travel plans (sans pandemic, of course) to see the world. She should… she should… what would have been… Her list goes on. She feels jilted, robbed of the future she’d planned. For her, I am often the voice of reason. The voice that says, “Love yourself exactly where you are.”
Don’t we all need to do this more? So, I’m not thirty-two. I’m fucking forty-seven. I’m successful. I’m respected by some, hated by others. I’m loved by those who matter most, and those I thought mattered really don’t. This is where I am. It’s not where I’d planned to be. But plans are roadmaps. A path to meet a goal – a destination. We can still get to a goal on a very different path than we’d imagined taking. Ever drive up and down the coast or across country and dealt with roadwork? Sometimes we have to pull off the interstate, travel through a cozy town on backroads or a business district where we decided to stop for coffee and a keychain for the sake of memories, but ultimately, we get back on track somewhere. Some of us decide to stay in that secondary place. Maybe we never get back onto the interstate. Even with that, it doesn’t mean our goals differ or change so drastically that we are off-roading with bicycle wheels for the rest of our journeys. We may think our goal was to hit the big city and become a playwright, but in the detour, we fell in love or suffered a loss or injury and derailed. Maybe the dream of Broadway lights is gone but flickering behind it is happiness and a rejuvenation of what lived beneath the dream from the start. To write. To make a difference. Maybe to just be happy. Who knows. What if we’d stayed on that path to Broadway lights and died along the interstate never making it anyway? That’s pretty bleak thinking but loving ourselves exactly where we are doesn’t mean living in the what ifs of a lifetime. It means tracking our goals, allowing them to evolve, digging deeper into those goals and finding the why behind them, and permitting slight alterations along the way. I tell my friend often to love herself exactly where she is because though her path isn’t currently what she’d planned or where she’d built her dreams, dreams aren’t real until we make them real. Therefore, we get to disassemble them and rebuild however we wish along our new paths.
My ripe old aged forty-seven advice is to love yourself exactly where you are. Don’t wallow in the what might have been – make something better. Try not to ache over the unjust and unforgiving past – make a better future. And remember no matter the gaslighting, the public perception of you is never the real you. Most people don’t tap into your depths enough to truly know you, and those who do – those friends of twenty-eight years, even if you tried to seduce them with song and dance, will remind you to stay on track or alter your course slightly where the magic awaits because you are worth it. Remember everyone will have an opinion of you. People you know and those you do not know, though it’s worth saying we are usually most disappointed by those we know. Set your boundaries and respect them yourself. It shouldn’t need to be said, but so often we set boundaries with others – I’m done with you, for example – but still allow those people to take up space in our minds aching over the unresolved. Draw those lines and don’t cross them until it is healthy to do so – even in your mind.
Yesterday I turned forty-seven years old. I’ve made mistakes and learned humility is my best path. I’ve loved and lost. I’ve lost more than won despite the perceptions of others. And as much as this number behind the birthday affects me, scares me, and worries me, it also heals me. I will continue to live in my truth and respect the many years I’ve spent on this path learning everything there is to know about me.
Yes, I’d like those fifteen years back. But I wouldn’t trade today for anything.
Be well. Be kind. Love yourself exactly where you are.
~Stella
