Switches · out towards Bolton, Manchester
I rebuilt what I do around what still suits me, quietly
Pinned as not_what_it_was
- Wants
- a partner who takes what I say about myself as the final word
- Rope so far
- Eighteen years, both ends, and a practice rebuilt in the last two.
- Around
- out towards Bolton, Manchester
I rebuilt the whole of what I do over about two years, on my own, without announcing it to anybody. Some of what I did at thirty five is not available to me now. Rather than declare a decline, I quietly worked out what still suits me, threw out the rest, and I am considerably happier than I expected to be.
Forty six, out towards Bolton, eighteen years in, both ends of it, as I always have been. The change was gradual and unglamorous and I am not going to itemise it for anybody. The short version is that my limits are different, they are settled, and a partner will hear them early and once.
What I found is that the version I do now is narrower and quite a lot better. When there are fewer things available you pay far more attention to the ones that are. I would not have chosen any of it and I am not sorry about where it has landed.
The part that is still hard is other people's faces. There is a particular sympathetic expression that arrives the moment a woman my age says her body has changed, and I have no use for it whatsoever.
What I want is a partner, both directions, over years, who treats what I say about myself as the end of the subject rather than as an opening position. Somebody roughly my own age would be easiest, though I am not fussy, and anybody with their own list of things they no longer do would probably understand fastest of all.