Clearly My Ego is Okay.

For the most part, my haters stay hidden away and, for that, I thank them. My haters are classy. Thank you, my haters.

There are lots of people in this world who don’t like me – for any number of valid, and sometimes stupid, reasons. It has taken me a lot of years to accept that. After all, I find myself to be perfectly charming, delightful to be around, and positively awesome; it makes no sense to me that anyone could possibly not agree, right?

The funny thing is that, until the past few years, there’s no way I could have handled spending any length of time with myself (if it were possible to hang out with your external self). I’d have hated me as a friend – because I was struggling with being who I was, consistently, versus being the sort of person I thought I should be. I wasn’t the sort of person I thought I should be, so I tried and failed, and it was all rather messy inside my head.

(It’s still messy inside my head, but in a different way.)

At any rate, the lovely thing about my life these days is that the haters just don’t bother to engage. No one drops by my blog to leave mean comments anymore (and no, I’m not deleting stuff behind the scenes). No one emails to call me an idiot every time I post something, somewhere. No one stalks me on Facebook to criticise my assorted life choices. And no one shows up in person to hate on me.

I’d like to attribute this to being in my late-30s and having friends who are also older – but I’ve been online long enough to know that age has nothing to do with it.

At this point in my life, my friends accept who I am (at my core, I mean) but also know when to pick their battles and argue with me. I think it’s because I live a life that’s mostly free of people who are negative – the people who are negative for the sake of being negative, I mean – and I have finally learnt to shut out the few that remain.

The happiest change, though, is that I just don’t care anymore.

Hate how I’m raising my kids? Okay!

Hate the colour of my hair? Great!

Think I’m immature? Fine!

Don’t like my tattoos? Yay!

Don’t approve of [fill in the blank for yourself]? I don’t caaaaaare! La la la!

Growing up, some of the most common things I heard at home was, “What will other people think?!” and “You should be better than [name]” and “You can’t do [that thing] because you’re not that sort of person!”.

That’s a hard thing to get past. It doesn’t matter what people think. I can’t be better than [name] because I don’t even want to be like them in the first place. And, ohmygod, I AM that sort of person! I AM!

Y’know, it’s a weird feeling to just not care. It snuck up on me. For someone who spent years – decades! – worrying about whether people might like me, or hoping no one would notice my faults, or waiting for someone to approve of me.. well, it’s downright liberating to just be myself. It’s crazy how much I like myself these days.

There are down days, yes, but they’re few and far between. There are things I’d like to change, yes, but that will come with time. I’m kind of awesome, people.

In the meantime: life is short. Gotta’ roll with it. Follow your bliss. Etc.

And to all the haters who bother to read and who keep their hate on the inside, somehow – thank you. Really.