Update on "Reinventing" My Life
living outside the box and redefining/refining as we go
It’s been a few weeks since I moved in and started sleeping at my apartment. Since early August, the differences between city living and suburban living have become more pronounced. I’m sinking into appreciating the good parts and figuring out how to live with the more difficult aspects (being car-less, for now). Overall, I’m immensely proud that I’ve gotten myself here. It’s already started to feel like my place, filled with everything I own in the world, set up exactly how I like it. I’m thrilled I’m able to truly appreciate all that I have, because there were so many times when all I could feel was the lack of having anything (material or abstract).
My city persona makes itself known in the way I stand outside my apartment, like I’m waiting for a city bus, when in actuality I’m waiting for my brother to pick me up for morning coffee. I clutch my tote bag tight to my side, like there’s strangers around who might grab it, or I look like I’m preparing to inconspicuously shove myself onto a crowded city bus. I gotta learn to relax more, be less on guard. Isn’t that what it’s all about?
If this “living conditions” experiment of mine is anything, it’s a practice in letting my guard down, and a re-acceptance and a return to my core self, so to speak. I got as tough as I needed to in order to get through the tumult of my 20s-into-30s, and now that I’m one month away from turning 40 years-old, I can safely reflect on lessons learned and simply R E L A X. I don’t need to be so hard on myself or my past. I’m learning to luxuriate in what feeling like ME is all about. And, I’m defining and refining that as I go.
When I think of how I was living in New York up until I left, I feel cramped up, like I was living as a boxed up version of myself. Boxed into what I felt like friends wanted out of me: for me to be a “fun” person who will stay out drinking with you til late. That might be an aspect of who I can be, but for too long I was only being that. A tired, stuck record on loop.
As my broken foot healed last fall into winter, I sat on my couch, alone in my bedroom, thinking about how to break out of the loop I created. It allowed me the space to reckon with myself and see what wasn’t resonating anymore. I was sick of all the antics that got me here. For the first time ever, I felt ready to grow up.
One moment that sticks out to me is scrolling through the feeds of bar acquaintances a generation older than me (already in their 50s). They were like mini-celebs to me for much of the time I knew them. But suddenly, the constant, throwback photos of parties they threw in the 90’s seemed silly and childish. For years, I’d been “Like”-ing all these photos, in awe that they were there. But these days, I get a sense that they aren’t quite sure who they’re supposed to be now.
We all use the past to inform who our current selves are. Some, like those mentioned, have to reference their past all the time in order to remind them who they are so they can continue to identify themselves that way. Me, I’ve always been wary of anyone who lives firmly planted in the past, but what’s new is my realization that we don’t have to become a tribute act to our former selves, in order to define our present day selves. I’ll never be a person who has to tell people, “Well, back when I lived in NYC…,” because I lived it and I’m keeping it there.
Evolving is absolutely necessary now (especially as a woman, because we live in a world that hates aging, single women). Current day me, is thrilled to find that I’m interested in moving further from the party vibe-era version of myself. For a while, it felt like she was the only one who existed within me. But now, I’m proving myself wrong, and I know there’s way more to me than that. I’m excited to keep impressing myself from age 40 onward, baby.