At some point within the last year I saw a tumblr post on one of those \u201cbest of\u201d compilations that spoke to me, as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have spent nearly 40 years breaking myself into bite-sized pieces. I\u2019ve worried that I\u2019m too weird, I\u2019m too nerdy, I\u2019m too wordy, I\u2019m too big, I\u2019m too much. 40 changed that. 40 gave me permission to say that I\u2019m tired of trying to please everyone. 40 gave me permission to say that this is who I am. 40 gave me permission to recognize that I will never be everyone\u2019s cup of tea but that some people don\u2019t like tea and, frankly, it\u2019s not up to me to change their mind. 40 gave me permission to stop apologizing all the time for being myself. 40 gave me permission to be angry sometimes and it also gave me permission to be happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I fit many of the tropes about middle-aged women. I really do<\/em> like the music they\u2019re playing in the grocery stores. I actually can<\/em> get pretty excited about a new kitchen gadget. I really do<\/em> want a pumpkin-spice latte a couple times a year. So what? Excuse me for trying to find joy in a mundane chore like shopping, or wanting a gadget to make the endless meal prep a little easier, or for wanting a moment of warmth and comfort in a cup. The world so often tells women that the things they like, or want, or do are \u201ctrite\u201d, or \u201ccute\u201d, or \u201cunimportant\u201d and many of us buy into that for a lot of years\u2026far too many years (any number of years is too many). And then 40 comes along (or maybe it\u2019s a different age for you) and you realize that the world is always going to ask you to make yourself smaller but that it will never matter how many times you try to fold yourself up or over because the world will just keep asking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The important part of the tumblr post isn\u2019t the bit about letting people choke, though. I don\u2019t want anyone to choke. Rather, it\u2019s that I\u2019m tired of breaking myself into bite-sized pieces. Instead, it\u2019s up to people not to bite off more than they can chew.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Note: This was originally published on August 11, 2019. I\u2019ve never been a good judge of age. I feel incredibly uncomfortable when people do that thing where they encourage me to guess their age because the facts are that a) It doesn’t really matter to me and b) I\u2019m going to be forced to guess … <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/goalicego.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/letthemchoke.jpg\")
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