New Birthday, New Me

My ambivalence about my birthdays is not a secret. I have talked about it here and here. Another one is approaching, and I feel the same way.

However, there is something else that has become glaring to me even as my birthday approaches, and I'm not ambivalent about it! It's the fact that I know and love me, for who and what I am.

The sense of self love has been something that has been growing for some years now, and over the past few years, I have become so loving of myself that I can honestly say I am living my best life in that sense. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm still out here in these streets, trying to estalish solid finances, a career and still growing as a woman, a wife, a mother and every other responsibility and person I have become. But, I love myself and I don't want to be anybody else! I love my unqueness to the point of wanting to reinforce it at every opportunity.

I was listening to a sermon on Sunday and it hit me when the speaker mentioned something related to this that there's never been a time in the past few years when I have looked at somebody and said, 'I wish I was that person...",  "I wish, at least, that I had this or that like that person...", "...if only I was this or that". I have not been covetous about anyone for years.

Never! I kid you not! And you can tell I am still excited by this (the generous exclamation marks don't lie). It really did hit me. I feel like I am living life as me, and that revelation is so freeing to me that I felt like doing a jig at that very same moment. Of course I didn't! I mean, could you imagine, doing that dance for free?!

I have speant half of my twenties, it looks like, just figuring out who I am, the world around me and all. I have learnt some secrets, one of which is to never compare myself to others and to know myself to the point that other people's opinions or shenangians (and we know people be acting up) do not destabilise or affect my sense of self and some more ways to be happy (I wrote about some of these ways here).

And, on Sunday, it struck me that these things and others had become part and parcel of me. I had become regenerated and that was my Eureka moment!

So, as this birthday rolls around, I can confidently say I love me, I am excited at what and who I have become and how I am working to be my own version of MY best. Happy birthday to me!