Earlier this morning I sat with my middle child on a low bench giggling over some silly BTS edit. My face was flushed, my smile stretched from ear to ear. I felt light and giddy. My laugh was loud. My husband who was watching something serious on TV turned to look at me. It hit me with force that I have not felt this way in decades. I was not this giggly or silly in my teens or as a young adult. I aspired to maturity. My body language mirrored the burdened older folk in my family. I found crushes silly and fangirling unbecoming. I looked down on people around me who consumed their daily dose of escapism on TV. I preferred books thinking they were somehow cerebral and therefore classy.
I recoiled this morning thinking of how pretentious I have been all my life.
Over the past year I have lost myself to a form of escapism that resides in the digital world. In the real world though, my shoulders are relaxed, my neck soft. The back of my ears are not stretched tight with some residual tension. I laugh easily. I laugh out loud. I smile more often than I am staid. I dance as I walk. I bop to music as I fold clothes. I wear dresses even when they make me feel alien. I love it when my youngest calls me kdrama momma.
This sillier, gigglier version of me as I near my fifties looks way better on me than any look I wore in my twenties or thirties. I am loving this phase of my life.
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