Who I am at 36

Last weekend, the film of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing was on HBO. This is one of my all-time favorite films, so of course I had to stop channel surfing and watch. And when Nate got up from his nap, he joined me and watched for a bit, too.

You're never too young for Shakespeare.

If you haven't seen this film, you should. It's hysterical. (Yes, Shakespeare, hysterical.) One of the plot lines involves the characters Benedick and Beatrice (played by then-married Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson, sigh) and how they are tricked into revealing they love each other.

Benedick, unaware that he has been tricked into this, upon warming up to tell his friends that despite railing against love for years, he is now in love, says, "Gallants. I am not... as I have been."

You have to see this to get the full affect of Branagh's full-on toothy "beeeeen." It's awesome. But, of course, he is indeed who he has been, he's just evolved and can admit to more aspects of himself than he was previously comfortable confessing.

In the spirit of that, today - four days after my 36th birthday - I am also not as I have beeeen. But in some ways, I am still very much who I always remember being.

I still love:

reading

watching television (more than I should)

going to the movies

cheese

reading about fashion and style (starting reading fashion mags when I was 10)

sitting and thinking

R.E.M., Morrissey, The Cure, and Tori Amos

Converse

being a student

quiet

alone time

autumn

Christmas

I also now love:

my son, more than anything in the world and more than I ever dreamed possible

myself, more than I ever thought I'd be capable of

my husband, who at times I thought I'd never find

teaching

feeling happy (for a long time I preferred feeling depressed)

cooking and baking

I still don't like:

Being told what to do

Feeling like I should like something because "everyone else" does

Rice pudding

Mayonnaise

Sour cream

Being sweaty

Public displays of affection

Hugging

New Years Eve

I still:

Refuse to like things because they're popular (yeah, I'm 15 still sometimes)

Like to buy pretty things I won't then use (like lots of makeup and shoes with heels)

Have to work at being a good listener

Get irrationally aggravated at people who can't properly navigate a four-way stop (I severely hate the people who roll right through their stop sign when I was there first - you'll see me yelling after them, "Stop sign! Stop sign!"... I don't know why this gets on my nerves so much, but it does)

Hate admitting when I was wrong

~~~

Do you remember being a teenager and feeling like there's no way you'll ever truly know who you are? I remember thinking, "I change EVERY DAY. How will I ever just 'know' who I am because I'll never be steady in any way." If I dug around, I'm willing to bet I'd find a high school journal that actually said as much. Even though that was probably 20 years ago, that feeling is still so fresh in my mind. I can feel the essence of how it felt to believe that. But yet, now, I do know who I am. In fact, I don't spend much time really thinking about the essence of me. Sure, I think about things I want to achieve or qualities about myself I'd like to work on, but I don't feel lost in myself like I used to. There are a lot of things I do miss about my late teens and 20s but that isn't one of them. I enjoy the feeling of relief I get when I think about knowing who I am.

That said, I don't want to rest on that relief. There's still so much I want to do and achieve. Being happy with me doesn't mean I don't keep moving forward.