Friday 9:19pm 9Mar07
I'm feeling real good tonight. I'm finding myself being more friendly with complete strangers. I'm finding the joke in most situations. I feel like I'm in love, but I'm not. I like the thought of being in love with someone but I think I'm falling in love with myself actually. I'm falling in love with myself because I'm finding ways to share myself with others the way that I want to. I feel more optimistic about everything. I'm falling in love with myself because I'm getting in touch with, 'this is who I am, take me or leave me'. I'm feeling more comfortable about being a flawed person and it feels good.
I'm finding that as I delve into my own insecurities I keep coming back up from them and seeing my life to be more fun even the waiting and figuring out if the guy that I've liked and have been getting to know for a year likes me back. Yeah, I'm feeling like a teenager, in that respect!
I started taping Oprah. I figured since I was taping Inside the Actor's Studio everyday I might as well tape Oprah. Tonight I caught her episode on women and aging. I was cracking up at some of the things the women said and feeling thrilled about some of the others. Like Diane Sawyer saying that at 60 years old she's finally realized that she needs to have time for herself. Diahann Carroll realizing that she'd never been without a man in her whole adult life and has actually learned how to love being alone and not having to report to someone. Also taking the reins and calling a man to fulfill her needs and not being invested in the outcome. And finally, depending on her friends more. All of those things I've figured out by being alone, by being the person that never jumped into new relationships the moment a relationship ended, taking the time to grieve the end of a relationship before I got involved with someone else.
My so-called embarrassing (or pity causing) singlehood has taught me how to be on my own and take care of myself and like myself and these women are saying that's something they've learned or embraced in their 60's! Heck, I got all that stuff out of the way and I'm only 43!
I'm finding my balance with people as a whole, in friendships and with men. After Oprah mentioned living your best life I thought, that's it, I'm learning how to live my best life. My rituals are defining who I am or I'm defining who I am through my rituals. I've always known that I wasn't going to be able to do everything the way my mother did. I was never going to the same king of selfless person that she was. I have a level of selflessness but I also need to be self focused. That is an extension of writing. I have to be able to focus on myself in order to take the time to write. There has to be a certain amount of self focus or setting that priority of putting myself first in order to set the priority of writing. I am in my writing. I write to absorb life and understand life. I write to analyze how I feel. I write because my imagination is out of control. I write because I'm interested and I love life's mysteries and I love to write.
I loved when Christina Yang said to Doctor Burke on Grey's Anatomy that she was a surgeon. That he was important to her and being a surgeon was important to her. She was telling him that she wasn't going to give up her career nor give him up. She wasn't going to be the woman that stays home while her husband is out in the trenches. She was going to be out in the trenches with him. She said, "we can hire a wife!" I loved what she said because women are discovering that they want the man but they don't want to be the house maid. We can hire people to clean the house and cook the meals and do all the other chores that most of us end up taking care of because, let's be honest, most men still don't share in taking care of the chores. I loved what Christina Yang said because I've always known that I didn't want to be the wife, not in the conventional sense anyway. I don't love doing housework. I'm not interested in running a ship shape household. I just don't care about it. I'm impressed with people who do, but I don't. Somehow she validated it for me in my feminine consciousness. This is who I am, take it or leave it. That was a big insecurity for me, how can I be a whole woman and not want to do all the things that are supposedly within a woman's domain?
I'm a whole woman exactly the way I am. My mother always got a kick out me. She was in awe of my opinions and my independence but boy she'd be proudly jealous of the woman I've become.
I'm still amazed at how good I feel just from the memory of my birthday a full week later. Read about it here and here.
EY
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