Face Lift? Face Light? Face Life?
Strutting and bouncing with purpose and excitement forms each of my steps. I find the earth supporting my actions in advancing goals, undefined, except in my fantastic dreams. My hair bounces, posture aliens in a direction waiting to know where I’m going. Then there are the times when breath finds a weak slump pulling my feet with exhaustion and life seems as if weight has found itself tied and dragging my every step. When I strut I adore life, knowing who I am, asking eternal questions of myself, How can I keep the bounce that finds expressions I covet.
My vault for living is counted on when I go away. I quickly knew there was an invitation for his talk that was more than I wanted. Encounters with male openness as he walked the audience and again in the hallway found me talking to him and as I often am intimidated by male face to face interaction, I brought up my age when I be came uncomfortable. I said I was 68 while he and I talked about my revelation during his talk. My revelation was that life would find me and I didn’t need to search with verve for experiences. No matter what the provocation.
He said “you don’t look 68”. I left that part of the event with what does 68 look like spinning in my thoughts. Then we met again in the hallway and I just asked him “What does 68 look like ''? He said my skin was not that of a 68 year old. This was an affirmation I had been struggling with for a while in my Peter Pan existence and my high spirited self. Yet having a lot of years and self knowledge behind me, I knew I was in a struggle to love myself as I moved through the rest of my life?
What does love mean to me? What has love meant to me? An alarm system rings as love retreats from whoever my focus is; a hard wiring in me wanting attention from everyone. Even when a person’s interest shows an obvious disinterest.I can’t resolve from some playful actions. I have been graced with more than I could have ever imagined, still my struggle exists, I now face the waning of my beauty and I have just recognized I was beautiful inside. Feeling my authentic self and owning my beauty was just cemented, I had pushed it away much like love, living in a denial of just knowing I liked men to look at me but they were never allowed to get close in anything but imagination or what I thought was friendly play. My inner voice was one of self criticism: as it echoed: it can’t be true that I am beautiful; a proclamation of continual can’t. The voice can't continually whisper and sometimes shouts at me. Am I beautiful? Am I still beautiful? I am beautiful!
