When I wake up in the morning tomorrow, I will be 36.

I hadn’t expected to write anything tonight but had a change of plans, so instead here I am. I painted the master bedroom – no longer is it cream-colored walls with one bright, strong teal statement wall. Color, as I posted (in a maybe-not-safe-for-work photo) is important to me.

But so is that feeling of being home.

So the shocking teal wall is gone, now. Repainted – as is the entire master bedroom – in a warm, light-reflecting mocha color. I like it, it feels like a room you head to after a long day and expect that sleep will carry it all away. It’s the kind of place I wonder if I can watch snow fall in the winter, and allow myself to sit still long enough to watch it accumulate.

I’ve started to wear slightly more makeup when I have important meetings. My face is growing and ageing, I see it a little more. I see my face the way I never used to – before it was imperfections, and now it’s just me. Just me. I wonder if it’s why I don’t need to take so many self-portraits any more – no matter which way I turn, I think I understand who I am now. And I think in that comes a relaxed set of needs, a different view of myself. I don’t need a camera to show me who I might be – I think I now in my own head now.

As I get older I find things have a beauty which I haven’t seen before. It’s about taking my time and trying to see it. Ironic, isn’t it? When you’re a kid you spend all your time waiting for things to speed up, only to reach a point later in life where you just want to slow it all down.

I have had many incarnations since I started this blog. And the extremely wise Lea nailed what I thought might be the hub of it – people who come by here may not feel the need to be here if my life isn’t in turmoil. Or perhaps more to the point people want to read here because my entire history has been such high drama.

I know that people say leopards can’t change their spots, but the truth is that they can – you can find out that something was painted as a leopard but it really was a giraffe stuffed into leopard’s clothing all along. Horrible realizations came through last year – living separately, busting up a family, breaking hearts and shattered homes. He’s not perfect and I’m not perfect and together we had a not – perfect history and at the end of the day, we both found that we could be the person that the other person wanted. Moreover, we could be the person that the other person needed.

This isn’t to say that we don’t disagree, because we do. It isn’t to say we don’t argue any more, because of course we do. The nature and the reaction to arguments has changed, as has my view that issues between us need to remain between us.

But the basic truth holds – I seem happy because I am happy.

All of my life, all I have known is for life to be one giant walkway moving at a speed so high that I had to cling to the siderail to keep from being thrown. My whole life, from birth to some point recently, has been lived at high fucking drama and windswept moors that I shouted my way across. I inherited someone else’s drama from day 1 and I never knew that I could live my own life differently. And about three months ago, that realization hit and the implications of it came into my mind. Life doesn’t have to be fucking mental, it can be as calm as holding a little hand as it insecurely makes its way down a slide.

I made fairy cakes for the twins to take to nursery tomorrow, to celebrate Easter. Had I gone into the office I’d have taken some to pass round to colleagues that I laugh with, that I joke with, that I like. I’m part of a team now, even if I didn’t expect that to ever happen. Instead I’ll be in customer meetings all day tomorrow which means high heels, negotiations, managing expectations and tempers, and thinking of the twins opening up a box of fairy cakes at nursery, and their faces when they open it. And that, actually, is enough. That is my happy moment to take me through all of tomorrow, up until I am done with work for the day (and the four day weekend!) and I can go home to my family, to tantrums and cuddles and back episodes of Glee and DIY and all of the other things that the old me never knew she could have, and that the new me couldn’t live without. Life isn’t high excitement, and it’s not perfect. But it is the life I was meant to have, and I promise to give it all that I possibly can.

I’m not glossing over. Tomorrow I wake up an aging 36 year-old engaged mother of two and stepmum to two, full-time professional employee, serious geek, long-term blogger, and if you reached into my chest and pulled out my heart you would find it beating a rhythm that is so steady it instantly makes you relax and think of cocoa and Newbery Award books and wishing on stars.

I may not be as interesting reading, not having the tumultuous and tortured existence that I used to have.

I’m ok with that.

-S.

PS-and this, Mitzi, is a happy birthday on the right day, as I am online today after all and I hope your day has been glorious.