Arrival...

At a very dear friend's fourtieth birthday celebration it came up...what does this new decade mean to you?  What does 40 bring to you?  At 42 I feel I can answer certainty but then to be honest, I don't know that I care if I don't.  Arrival.  It means I have arrived.  I am officially the person I am.  Some wardrobe changes, a tweak here and there, a nip and a tuck but overall, this is it.  This is as good - or as bad - as it gets.  For me it's liberating.  It means I can admit to not liking to cook when everything thinks I should love it.  It means adoring my girlfriends and sunbathing in their acceptance of me with every quirk and glitch I bring to the table.  It means saying what's on my mind and in my heart without fear of exposure but with that comes responsibility to filter - something I didn't always have operating in full capacity. Just because I feel it, doens't mean I have to say it...and not saying it, doesn't mean I don't think it.  I just means I care more about being happy than being right (or argumentative...which in my life, is the same:)  It means having a bullshit detector that never runs out of batteries.  It's the narrowing of expectations and defining of what really matters.  It means letting myself be who I am and not making excuses for what I'm not.  It means seeing myself the way my kids too. 

It means laughing at myself because it's 330 in the morning and we leave on a cruise in four hours, I have slept less than three but I'm such a head case I can't sleep until all the laundry is done.  Yeah - I love that about me.  Embrace it friends, it's who I am and anxiety happens to be the soup of the day in my life.

I used to joke that I couldn't wait to be at a place where I don't care what people think but the truth is, I care a great deal...we all do but in the end, what I think has slowly crept into first place and I am really pleased to see it. 

Arrival.  It means I am working on myself every day, wincing in the mirror, reading enough health and diet books to open my own section at Borders, knowing what I'm good at and what I should officially leave behind, making room for peace and that cherry bookcase I wanted, moving toxicity out and opening the door for more good ju ju because in the end, no matter what, if this is what it is, it is really okay and that is what it means to me, to have truly arrived.