so pretty

march 24, 2022

i know a lot of attractive people. my whole family is attractive. i was lucky to be a cute kid. a cute little girl sets people at ease. and that seemed to stick with me as i got older. even now, with a fuller face, i see every day how beautiful i am, and i struggle with then feeling guilty for being vain, lol. but it took me a long time to appreciate my own face. and i do love it. i do love myself. years of not recognizing that love makes me angry at yet another facet of humanity--the part about how the patriarchy set standards of beauty, focused on women as objects of desire, and changed the rules up for how they should look, eventually leading to oversaturation of beauty-focused products in a consumer-based economy. 

but i digress. i am feeling myself today, and thought it made sense to write about that since it isn't often i feel this good about myself. it's good for me to take time to think about what is making me feel good in my body. 

i feel sturdy. strong. a little older. just slightly achy-er. but still flexible. still able to bend over and place my palms flat on the floor without any strain. perhaps an advantage of being short, but still. i feel pangs of arthritic pain in my left hand, the back of it. but not very often. i do take more ibuprofen at this age than i ever did in my life before, but i also try to pay attention to how much water i'm drinking, how much sugar i'm having, and i eat my vegetables even better than i did when i decided to be a vegetarian at 14. so i know my diet is fairly healthy. my gut feels strong, ya know? and i can do the things i need to do. i enjoy moving the furniture in a room around all by myself. i deal with cleaning on various levels, requiring various poses and a degree of endurance. anything i need help with is rarely a matter of just strength. my knees are having a harder time, but that is certainly a fair reason to want to lose some weight. but i just feel like, as they say, a knockout, and so whatever steps i take in this body, it will always be awesome. always be lovely. always be mine. my vessel. my self-propelled, chubby, meat suit. 

i've been cutting my hair. and i was flirting with the idea of cutting it much shorter for a while. kept having dreams that i cut it short. would wake up anxious. it's just the idea of having to wait so many years for it to be long again. right now--i've only cut off about 8 inches total, over time, and it's still well below my shoulders at the longest layers. and there is so much of it! so much. it makes me think of tricia, my godmother, who used to call it "the hair of life." 

thinking of tricia makes me think of ellie and what the medium said about her. the medium explained that some people "go home" and have no interest in visiting back with this plane of existence. and i can understand that. but it also makes me feel like in some cases it has to do with how much pain the soul endured that lifetime. and i understand wanting to let go of that completely. 

i don't want to live too long. i don't want to be a burden on any one, or any group of people. if i do end up in a nursing home, i hope that i make friends, and can enjoy the little things in each day that i look forward to as long as i have left, because that is the kind of person i strive to be. the type who can make the best of a situation without denying the pain of it. the type who finds beauty in the simplest things. a deep and fulfilling kind of beauty. 

but i don't want to die too young either. i feel like eighty years is sufficient at a minimum, and once you get to ninety, how do you even remember enough of what you've learned to be coherent? do you just sit on a porch and read books and drink tea? with the occasional visit from neighbors and family? goddamn that sounds wonderful. i just look forward to being able to need more rest. to just being able to relax for most of the day. does that ever happen? do we get old enough just to exist, and that's enough? lol

thinking of the things that make me happy--i've managed to bring myself to tears. happy ones. i get so emotional, and it's adorable. just another thing i love about myself. 

i will be gently with myself. i will be kind to myself. i will honor the boundaries necessary for my best self to step forward.