Stripped Naked

Mid-life is a time where the old is burned off, and even though our waistlines grow, the bare bones of us are exposed.

The raw, naked guts of us, if we’re willing.

I’m willing.

I’m tired of the bullshit, the people-pleasing, the tolerating, the constant fucking tolerating.

Being ‘nice’, making sure they like me, making sure no one gets upset, hoping they don’t all leave me.

I used to think of it as a gentle unfolding of our hearts, but today it feels much more visceral than that, a ripping open of the chest and exposing the rawness, the absolute vulnerability of me.

There’s sheer power there, inside, bottled up for all these years.

Dangerous power if unharnessed but just for a moment, letting it out to career around - the image of a woman, stripped naked, breasts thrust forward in the moonlight, arms thrown wide saying ‘yes’.

And as all the coverings are burned away, what is left is beauty and purpose.

Finally free to do what I came here to do.

Not, actually, much to my surprise, to be here in service.

But be here to be myself.

And only that.

Because it is everything.

I’ll lose friends and fans; I’m sure.

I never felt truly myself around them anyway.

I’ve have never truly felt like myself for the past forty five years.

I didn’t fit in, I wasn’t enough, I tried so hard, I wanted desperately to be noticed, I was always on the outside - only now I’m claiming all of it.

Yes, I cry. Yes, I feel lonely. Yes, I feel angry. Yes, I feel deep, bitter sadness. Yes, I especially feel rage.

And don’t dare try to offer sympathy, make me feel better or even extend me kindness.

This part I have to do alone.

Be in the fire. Be with the fire. BE the fire.

Until all of the excess is gone and I can discover what is left.

“She may be little, but she is fierce”

- Helena, in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Fuck, I’m so grateful to be a woman. That I get to make this transition and start anew.

I thought I would make this transition with grace, kind of spiritually and in a zen, floaty self-righteous manner.

I did not expect the street-fighting, the dirt and the blood and the ugliness of it all.

And yet here it is, out on the page for all to see.

There.

It’s done now.

This crazy mad woman outed.

Burn too, fell0w mad-women.

Let’s find out who you really are.