Welcome to May Mantown,

It hardly feels like Autumn in our little beachside town this week…

Paradise is so kind.

Just another blond girl here, reporting on the ups and downs of living in paradise.

My closest friends have often observed that I seem to feel a need to explain myself. In many circumstances they are quite right. I guess this is why I sit here expressing the elaborate rollercoaster fluctuations of my head today. The question is…why do I feel this need to explain?

Am I trying to defend myself? 

Sometimes yes.

Do I not feel understood?

Sometimes yes.

Do I not feel seen?

Sometimes yes.

Can’t I just leave people to interpret their experiences of me without a desire to respond?

Most of the time, to be honest – No.

Well, now that I’ve humbly identified one of my limiting personality quirks, let’s get on with it!

Loving myself.

We’ve all heard the wise people everywhere speaking of loving yourself fully prior to inviting the love of another in.

So blond girl – Do you love yourself?

I think I do…I mean I’m pretty sure I do. I know for sure that I love myself more today than I ever have before. What does it mean to love oneself? What does that actually look like?

What I am positive of is that I accept myself. I accept the idiosyncrasies of my quirky personality. I’ve fought them for years but hey, they aren’t going anywhere are they? I might as well give them some room in my bed.

I think I am an interesting and compassionate person. What is the difference between an egoistic love affair with self and pure self-acceptance? When is it selfish to acknowledge my benefit in this world and when is it purely sustenance for my soul?

I have chosen this life. I am thirty-six and it’s Sunday morning and I’ve woken up sprawled across the middle of my warm bed, sensing the sunbeams’ request to crawl through my blinds, “Please open me!” they say.

So I do, and I sit here, letting the intermitted light pierce through and blind my right eye and I’m ok with it. I’ve always wanted to wake up with sunshine on my face.

I look around my bedroom, decorated with so much thoughtfulness – my hanging English Ivy sneakily creeping along the top of my full-length mirror, almost suffocating the abstract portrait of the lady in purple. I chose her, the ivy, because she apparently refuses mould to live within ten metres of her leaves.

I glance at my bed-side table – topped with at least four or five crystals and about four or five books half read. One about science, three about yoga. None of them completed.

I thank my Father for passing on his gift of constantly craving wisdom whilst lacking the motivation to receive all of it.

My sister peers at me through her three-year old eyes, the picture of us together at Disney World as children. I’m wearing my “Life is a Beach” T-shirt. Maybe I should get that t-shirt made again and wear it everyday to remind myself that life at the beach can in fact be life as a beach?

Is happiness always a choice?

I am very happy today. I woke up and chose it today.

It’s funny, my admittance of desire for a boyfriend today doesn’t stem from lack but from an acknowledgement of feeling entirely full. The longing did stem from emptiness maybe even as little as half a year ago and it may very well stem from loneliness at some point again. The thing is that I am so madly in love with my life right now that I have even considered my greatest fear is not loneliness but letting go of my independence.

And so I’ve come to the conclusion that in feeling open to consistently develop myself I will say to the world, out loud, on this page, “Ok life, if connection is what it is all about then let’s see if I remember how to connect?”

(Let me be clear world – I’m not asking for a one-night stand with a hot surfer guy ten years my junior, but an actual relationship where we talk to each other everyday and go out for dinner and wake up together)

You see it’s been about four years since breaking up from my seven-year long ‘almost marriage’ in Canada. I have thought I was ready for love everyday since that ending. I even tried it a few times. It didn’t work. I fell in love like I always let myself do with everyone and they didn’t choose me back because I said they weren’t ready to connect. Maybe I wasn’t ready to communicate? Maybe it just wasn’t supposed to be?

It’s fine. I can see it now and my friend reminded me yesterday that I will most certainly look back on this time of freedom and space and choice today and long for it again.

I will be in another relationship, who knows what it will look like but I will long for these days when I can wake up and lie alone in my bed and meditate or go for a surf or meet a friend for a coffee or go for a walk or just lie here and stare at the ceiling and no one can suggest that I should do anything else.

So I love my freedom. I love my freedom so much that lately, I have come to the conclusion that my love for freedom might actually be stronger than my love for connection.

Sometimes connection isn’t easy. I would have to be vulnerable and let someone see me fully. What if they didn’t like what they saw? What if I open myself again fully to someone and he says, “Not really loving this baby. You’re too much for me!” and he walks away.

I have always walked away. I am afraid this means that it’s my turn to be walked away from. Maybe this is what is holding me back? It’s only fair isn’t it – If I get to walk away with my head held high twice, then surely I’m bound to be kicked to the gutter next time round?

Um, I don’t actually think life works this way. I think I can drop that useless excuse. Candy coating fear of letting someone in with fear of being left is quite clever blond girl – good work!

So I can see my attachment to my independence and my fear of losing my independence in a relationship. I can see the fear of not liking who I might become in a relationship because of whom I became in a previous one.

I can see my fear of falling deeply in love with someone and becoming attached to them and then being left alone again. I can see it all. Fear is standing in front of me naked, but he is me and I am naked in front of everyone I’ve ever known in my life and there’s nowhere to hide.

So fear, where do we go from here?

Maybe nowhere?

Maybe I sit this morning and let the sunlight illuminate my imperfections and I let myself be in love with them too.

I am a strong-willed independent woman. I like my freedom and my time and I like to feel that I always have a choice everyday about how to move through life.

Blond girl don’t you get it? No one is threatening this!

I am also a complete romantic and a painter and a contradiction. I love to imagine myself on a dance floor freely swinging my limbs around, accompanied by my favourite dance buddies.

I would love to glance across the floor and see you seeing me and I would love for you to walk up to me and pull me out of my fears and say, “Blond Girl, I see all of your walls and they don’t keep me out. I am stronger than your walls. You can dance and smile and laugh and flip your long hair over your shoulder flirting with every gawking man from the dark corners of the room and I am willing to stand up for your letting go.

It’s time now, to let go. I will catch you and you no longer have to be so strong. You will not lose your independence because you decide to love me. Your dreams for your life will not disintegrate. I will compliment your life. We can maybe even work together on our dreams?”

And he will not pull me off of the dance floor. He will let me stay there, dripping sweat and swirling my hips until I am done. And he will stand there waiting for me in one of the dark corners and when I feel complete he will step forward into the foggy spotlight from the stage and say, “Ok now, let’s go blond girl. I’ll take you home. Everything is going to be alright.”

Hmmmm. I like him.

What if he is already here beside me right now? Maybe he is in me right now? Maybe I am him? Maybe I am both him and myself and so then, well, we are pretty complete aren’t we?

Maybe this is what it means to love myself?

…Yes, today I feel complete, drenched in sunlight on a cool Sunday morning in bed – no longer alone, but completely by myself.

xx