A-Girl : Pull up to Preschool. Take off cowboy hat. Take off ropers, put on flip-flops. Cover up sweaty tank top with cleaner tank top. Turn off "Baby Got Back." Put on mom-face. Pick up kids. Wait, who am I again?
It’s not that I don’t know who I am.
It’s that I am so many people that I get fuzzy around the edges, sometimes.
I mean, I don’t pretend to be someone that I’m not but who I am gets tweaked based on who else is around. (That may be one of the reasons that I like the barn so much, it’s just me there, often times-me and Horse, and he doesn’t talk back.) The “A-Girl” that is appropriate for Saturday nights with my husband is just not appropriate for Monday morning at the Preschool get-together.
Still, I pride myself on living my life in such a way that is honest and open. I never want to look in the mirror and wonder who that person is, staring back at me, because I’ve buried her so far down that not even I’m sure who she is anymore.
As I’ve approached middle-age, I’ve found that I am steadily nixing the places where I can’t be “me” the most completely. If I have to change who I am for you then, maybe, we were never really friends to begin with? Yep.
(One of the biggest places that I find that I can NOT be myself is church. That is a real downer, as my belief structure about who God is has never really changed. He was fine with me Monday-Saturday, why did I suddenly have to put myself in a box on Sunday morning? I grew up in the church, I was a Chaplain’s Assistant/Youth Pastor/Pastor’s wife for nearly 12 years. I spent time at Bible college. I taught Sunday School, for god's sake! I’m not mad at God, I’m not even that disgusted with humanity. I just...you know what? This is a conversation better had in person than on the web. Subtlety and "heart" are missed in a written conversation. If you're still interested, I loved the book, A New Kind of Christianity by Brian D. McLaren. Yep, that's pretty much where I am at this point in my life.)
It’s not really that forty is such a big deal. It’s not the number or even the age, it’s the place. It’s “the middle,” I’ve lived for a few years and I have a few years left to live. Here I am, in the middle, looking backward and looking forward. I’ve overcome some stuff and hope to become some stuff. So, the “A-Girls” that I’ve been and am and that I still hope to be are all knocking around together inside my head.
Some of them that I’ve been and some that I still am, are:
Poet
Artist
Writer
Wanna Be Equestrian (read: cute little helmet, cute little pants, cute little saddle, jumping
my horse over JUMPS!)
Wanna Be Cowgirl (read: cowboy hat, chaps, F-150 driving, riding crazy buckin’ horses-yep, I
sure did, for a couple of barns)
Daughter
Survivor
Wife
Mother
(ALLLLLL the subsets of wife/mother-maid, nurse, call girl etc)
Ex-wife
Step-Mom
Art Teacher
Sunday School Teacher
Drama Coach
High School Newspaper Editor
Pastor’s Wife
English Major
80s teenager- “Like, to-tally!”
Yeah, it gets sorta crowded up in my tiny head, sometimes.
A-Girl that I hope to be:
Balanced
Steady
Fair
Healthy
Confident
Strong
Accomplished
Content
Hmmmm, my past “selves” are defined by “what” they were. My future hopes are defined by “how” I want to be. Wow. Maybe, I’ve really learned something along the way-that what you are is not nearly as important as how you are. Wow. Let me take a moment and digest this…<digesting>… “talk” to you soon.
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