Growing Up is Optional...

Well, according to the latest zodiac report, my sign, Sagittarius doesn’t actually grow up until we hit the age of 60...not sure what is going to happen then, but this means I have 4 more years to enjoy my youth!  I mean Leo never grows up, so something to aspire to.

I don’t FEEL 56.  I don’t act 56, according to my children.  If I had a nickel for every time my son said to me, “MOM, YOU ARE NOT REALLY 35!”  I would have a lot of fucking nickels.

Being youthful doesn’t mean I am irresponsible, I mean, most of the time.  I still care way too much about clothes and parties and more teenager kind of things.  I love to travel, go to concerts and spend as much time as I can in nature.  But I pay my bills, show up where I am supposed to and can generally be relied upon to do the right thing, the adult thing.

I think I have been a pretty good parent.  Definitely fun. Have had a harder time maintaining boundaries and commanding respect.  But I think my kids would say that I have been a good mom: loving, kind, present, while also calling me out for my OCD, neat freakness, unhealed trauma and having too many cats.

I don’t want to grow up and be all stiff and inflexible.  I also do not want to be one of those people who just hold onto youth and kind of make a fool of themselves in the process.  But of the two, I will pick the fool every single time.

The challenge of my life has been to not take myself and this whole living thing so seriously.  Life is meant to be enjoyed, relished, savored.  I can’t do that if I am wrapped around the axel about stupid shit.  I have always marched to my own drum and I can’t see any reason for stopping now.  I love the creature comforts of my home and level of success, but I could move into a van and drive off just as easily.  I think, upon reflection, I have done a good job of holding on and letting go.  And I pray that as I enter this new time moving from middle age to older age, I can remember that life is meant to be enjoyed and experienced and that I will not let fear hem me in.

I believe I have matured...to the degree I am capable.  But grow up? I am not so sure.  I still want to do all the things I did when I was 17: shop, lay by the pool or at the beach, flirt with boys (men now, don’t make it weird), dance, laugh, deeply enjoy the people in my life, travel.  I know the time will come when either my body or mind shall dictate another reality because that is just what the end of life brings for us all.  Until then though, I plan on relishing at least the feeling of youth I possess.  I may not look 35 but I feel it most days so I am gonna go forward with how it feels rather than how it should be or how it looks.

Again, still...