Thirty-Six

For me there are only two types of women: goddesses and doormats.
-- Pablo Picasso

I am thirty-six years old; I have been for six weeks now. Thirty-five was a hard birthday for me. You might remember my sudden preoccupation with the aging process. It was gruesome. I suddenly felt the clutches of all my days groping my defenseless flesh, clawing at me such that I really couldn’t see myself at all.

I looked in the mirror only to see crow’s feet, laugh lines, a pot belly, a more than ample back-side. I stared in silence and heard my reflection yelling back at me an excruciating monologue of failures, inadequacies, a lack of ideas, time, money, success, publication...

“You need to get off your ass.
You need to lose ten pounds.
You need to write.
You need to finish something.
Jesus Christ, you need a haircut.
You need to LIVE.”

I don’t see it that way today, a year into it. Maybe it’s because I’m a ridiculous optimist. Maybe it’s because I’m desperate to justify myself. Maybe it’s because my character is such that I feel obligated to reset my expectations, to change the filter through which I see things, through which I see myself, so that I can be happy. I need to be happy.

I am not afraid. I am not a girl. I applaud my flaws, even when they make me cringe, and they do. They are my humanity. What stories I can tell with my wrinkles, my laugh lines, my gray hair. There is a short story behind every stretch mark, a beautiful baby behind each of my tired breasts, a novel behind every scar on my body. I just have to write it that way, if I can manage to see it that way first.

I am not a doormat. I am living. I am being. I am my body. I am all grown-up and I turned out just fine. I’m thirty-six and finally, Goddamn it, I’m ready.

Let the Goddess years begin.