One Life to Live...

No, not the soap opera.  Well... maybe, but not the one you are thinking of.

My wise and wicked stepmother (the wicked is in jest, the wise is not) has told me, repeatedly, that the older I get, the less I will care about what others think.  And oh, how true!  I have spent the first 40 years of my life truly concerned about how people would think if I did this, did that, said this, thought that.  And that has stifled me.  A lot.

The past two years, though, I have been working on letting that concern go. 

Most recently it has become more important to do what I want/feel and say what I think/know and not stifle myself because of fear.  I have had to take baby steps... feeling my way forward in the darkness of what I have always known, because that fear is pretty strong.  I think as I make a break-through, though, I do something little in a symbolic gesture of what I've have done mentally, emotionally or psychologically.

Lately, it has been self-alteration.  Minor self-alteration, but it's a change nonetheless.

Purple hair.  Not all of it... just a little.  But it's a symbol of breaking free from a few of my own self-imposed tethers.

I'm sad that it has taken me 42 years to stop caring so much, and start being more of who I feel I am inside.  I can't say I'm done caring, or feeling fear about being me, but I feel so much more happy and closer than I've been before.

After all... it's my only life, right?  Why not be me in it?

Yep yep.  Purple.  I think it's a good color.

What do you do to celebrate you?