we can't self-care community away

on keeping our little plans

A couple of weeks ago I had a night where I was feeling so hot, so unstoppable, so fresh, so light on my fucking feet, that when I got home I looked in the mirror and quite literally burst out laughing in disbelief that the person staring back was me. I was a main character in a film montage, right before her life inevitably turns to shit. 

Now, I am not particularly burdened with physical insecurities, and I know reflective store windows on a quiet street hate to see me coming, but I can't say that I'm usually flying this high on my own self-esteem. It interested me, this development, and not just because of the dozens of frankly incredible selfies littering my photo roll the next morning. 

In an effort to understand what exactly had left me in such a state, ideally to later replicate it but not too often because who knows what kind of person I'd become, I thought about what, exactly, had made the day different. 

Because yes, I had worn contacts instead of my usual glasses, and I had done my makeup slightly better than usual, and my hair was shiny and blow dried, but that couldn't have been all. After all, I had gotten rained on earlier, sans umbrella, partly ruining hair and makeup! 

In that very rain, I'd had to walk longer than I thought I would to a concert, and the streets were emptier than I'd predicted, which always makes me a bit wary when I’m walking solo. Then, at the concert, a tall couple stood in front of me and I had to perform a constant left-right shift to catch a glimpse of the stage. (The singer, god bless him, was wearing dungarees, so my partial view of the stage was really not as big a tragedy as you might think.)

Like, you kinda have to laugh.

All this to say: by most metrics, it wasn't a perfect night. I shouldn’t have felt as invincible as I did, nearly skipping on my way home.