own it

[disclaimer: in the immortal words of ice-T, people have to learn how to tell stories without implicating those who may not want their stories told. to the best of my ability, i do this here.]

this whole divorced-woman thing is really an onion. every day, there's a new layer to the process. i'm starting to feel like a cliche here with all this SELF-DISCOVERY. not that i'm not grateful to be a better person, to have a chance to spend the rest of my life in a much better frame of mind and all that. i'm just a little bit over feeling like a damn self-help book.

but then i think about how few people really do understand the concept of living authentically. that in and of itself sounds so silly, but let me tell you how vital it really is. not being true to what you want and doing your level best to get it is... well, it's corrosive. it eats you alive from the inside out. and people just settle for hiding themselves behind images of what they think people expect them to be, all the time. i woke up and said no more, and it's a new dawn, a new day, and a new life for me since i made that call. it's bliss, frankly.

so why do that to yourself? why be secretive, or worse, duplicitous? why tell the world you're something, when you know full well you're something else entirely? it makes me sad. why would you tell people who love you grand, sweeping falsehoods that are easily uncovered? especially when the circumstance about which you're lying could have actually happened but for the fact that you didn't want it to? to call that dissembling insults the word. not only is it a lie, though, it dishonors the love we have for you. do you think we're going to care, whatever the truth may be?

life is too damned short to live a lie. it really, really is. so be what you are, especially when you know the risk of that is low. wrap your arms around everything and own it, up, down, left and right. i can tell you from experience that living free of faking it is the only way to do it. if you actually want to live, that is. existing is an option too, i guess. but really, i've done that too. this is so, so much better...