Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

My birthday this year wasn't really a meaningful day in terms of years. I turned a nothing-age. You know what I mean right? Those ages that matter to nobody. Not even an almost-age like seventeen, twenty, twenty-nine. I just turned thirty-three and it was fine. I had no strong feelings about it, beyond a nagging sense that it was time to make some definite plans about how I want to run things from here on out.

Since then something has been quietly happening to me and it's kind of awesome. For the first time in a long time I am beginning to feel like Maria again. Not Maria the grad student, Maria the mother, Maria the wife of the curator---just Maria. I am not really sure how else to put it, but it feels a little like my teen years minus the angst, insecurity, and general disregard for others.

 

I have just felt liberated in a way that I haven't felt for ages. I can't really put my finger on it, let alone put it into words, but something is changing or perhaps returning to its original form. I have felt so much lighter and that is obviously supported by the end of winter! Yet, it is more than that. I am laughing more. I am having more fun. I have been following my whims. I am embracing my weird, my whimsy. New things are knocking at the door and I am ready to open it.

While I am here though I am also cleaning out some unwanted baggage. I have been working to look at the world through a more forgiving lens. I am trying to curb my cynicism, it's a dumb joy sucker. In connection with the anti-cynic that is budding within I am embracing even more whole-heartedly the moments of joy that I find and not feeling as though I have to hide those feelings. When I want to stop and smell the roses by golly I will. When I feel like running and riding the shopping cart at the store while two little girls scream with pure delight I am going to do it and I won't apologize as I whiz past you. When I am moved by the way the clouds caress the horizon I am going to mention it to you. Because why not? You can laugh at me, because I am a weirdly emotive person and that's great too. It's all fine, because at the end of the day we are all on a round ball shooting through space around a gigantic flaming ball of light. Everything else is silly.