Now

I have spent most of my adult life feeling like a failure and a fraud.

There.  I said it.

I think maybe lots of people feel this as they are growing into adulthood.  Becoming themselves.

I have been becoming myself for a long, long time.  Still am, I suppose.

A couple of weeks ago, on the day before my birthday, I had a brief moment of - I don't know - clarity?

I was sitting in my car, at a red light, on the way home from work, flipping through some paperwork and I looked over to see a driver in another car looking in at me.

And for that little moment, I saw myself in another way.  For that brief moment, I felt like I had finally, finally become the woman I had dreamed of being when I was a little girl.

A grown up.  Driving a real car.  Living in a real city.  With a good education and a real job.  Wearing good perfume and real diamond earrings (tiny, but real, a gift from my Mom).

I didn't feel like a fake or a fraud or a failure.  I felt like a grownup.  I felt like - myself.

I hope she sticks around for a while.
Image:  She Was Free by Love Wish.