As I am

All those random "beautiful" sigs doing the rounds these days had me thinking. Not about my "inner beauty" or loving myself, cause, quite frankly, I am amazed that the mirrors in this place are intact, but about an aspect of myself that I have found very irritating. And that is my tendency to apologise for the choices I've made in life.

To recap, while not a blushing virgin bride who set up in the suburbs and bred from here to eternity, the truth, in blunt form isn't that far from it. I went to uni at 17, met LH, lost virginity to him, got married, had 2 kids (though not in that order ;)) and am nearly finished my degree so that we can have lots of money and buy a house on the fringe of suburbia. And you want to know the most insidious bit? I am actually HAPPY about it! I can hear the gasps of incredulity from here.

There is a set pattern for a person who wants to be taken seriously as well rounded and experienced these days. It involves study, travel, life experience, love experience, lust experience and various dalliances with fringe behaviours of choice (take your pick between drugs, promiscuity, poverty, trekking the himalayas or all of the above). It seems that to be a person of interest, one must have had glorious years of selfish abandon such that when the realities of life intrude, or you actively choose to partake in them (ie the prosaic tasks of marriage, children, property and white goods ownership) you are ready to "settle".

The implication of that all is, that if you haven't partaken in something a little extraordinary, that while a lovely person, positively simpatico one might say, you are destined to watch from the outside because you will never understand just how much fun life is. I have felt this myself often. Felt consigned to the back rows because I haven't lived that hedonistic, heady, pheromone filled drug fuelled higher plane of existence. And, as a result, I have often, while conversing with the elite, felt the need to apologise for my shortcomings. As if somehow, my lack of drunkeness while in a state of disrobed disrepair in a bar in Latvia was a giant black mark on my record. An instant "Do not enter into conversation with this one as her domesticity and lack of experience will have your eyes rolling before you finish with the pleasantries".

But, I have decided that this is crap. Pure unadulterated crap. Why on Earth am I apologising for the choices that I have made in life? I love my life. As in really truly love it. I love where and who I am and who I am being and going to be. And they were choices. I had the opportunity for the other things, and I chose not to do them. I wanted more than that. Now that's a weird thing to say, because what could be more than a journey of self discovery where you can hurt none but yourself? I guess for me my one search has always been for love. I can get acceptance from anywhere, admiration from anyone, but in the comfort and security of love I can be more. (Please excuse all teh italics, I am but 25).

I am not smug in my position in life. I don't think it's for everyone, and I don't think it woudl suit many. I do not think that my life is better than anyone else's but it is best for me. I am challenged, I am pushed, I am always learning and exploring, but I also have my soft place to fall. It's not weak to have wanted that, nor weak to embrace it fully. And I am making a pact with myself to stop apologising for it. For undermining my own choices, and second guessing myself into thinking that I am somehow less worthy.

I am me. I like me. Just as I am.