There was a time, not long ago, I would have given anything to be something else.  

Ever since I was little I wanted to be an animal.  It didn't really matter what animal, as long as it was an animal.  Animals were beautiful effortlessly, it seemed to me, and oh so deserving of love, admiration, respect, and affection.  I was not.  I was less than perfect, unlovable as a little girl, and so I sought to be an animal.  It had to be better than being a human, especially a chubby little girl who nobody understood.

As I grew, I centered my life around this belief, that it would be better to be other.  At first it was unicorns and horses, then it was the fiery power of dragons, and finally the mysterious grace of wolves.  I thought that if I could somehow learn the ways of wolves, perhaps I might find a way to become one of them someday.   Perhaps I could find four feet and race into the wilderness where life would be simple.  Others would accept you as you were, and together you all would be beautiful and loved, and those that didn't love you would be as dust.  Gone and forgotten on an icy mountain breeze.  Nothing would matter but your pack and the hunt.  Life would finally be sweet.

I harbored this belief and held onto it tightly as I grew ever older, convinced that being a wolf was preferable.  Others of my kind would accept me, and we would find solace in this hard life and seek the magic of animalness together.  We would understand one another and find acceptance in our strangeness.  

But as the years passed, I found that animalness let me down time and again, left me empty and wanting no matter how hard and tightly I grasped it.  Perhaps it meant that I had to try harder, search farther, find better friends, different circles, and different answers.  Yet nothing and no one I ever came across on the search for fur and fangs brought me peace.

Then one day it happened.  As I had always wanted to, I fell in love.  He was like me at the time, a man searching for that doorway to wildness, to becoming a wolf.  A soulmate, or so I thought then (later I discovered how blind I was to his own humanity and thus very human flaws).  But the deeper I fell in love with him the more I finally understood that being human was far more preferable to a fantasy.  I wanted reality; I wanted this love in my real, waking world.  I wanted it for me, the real me, the human me.  And before my eyes it crumbled, the fantasy of what we had unable to endure the real world, leaving me empty, leaving me questioning everything.

Leaving me with nothing but myself.    

No wolves, no romance, no illusions, just the rawness of my real life.  It set my feet upon a journey of understanding WHY.  Why could I not find happiness?  Why was contentment so elusive?  Why did I have to suffer?  Why could I never find that perfect love I always searched for, that was the holy grail of my existence?

In honestly searching for answers to the whys of my life, I came upon the simple truth:  nothing and no one could make me happy and loved but me.  And who I was, was human.  Simply human and nothing more.  But as I have grown older and grown inside I find that there is nothing "simple" to being human.  Being human is complicated, it's difficult, and yet I have found in embracing that humanity that there is sweetness and joy in living.  In growing older, and growing up, I am finally finding myself in the simple, yet complicated, glorious state of my own humanity.

I have finally grown comfortable in my imperfect body, yielding to its heavy softness, its aches and pains, and its familiarity.  I am starting to see signs of my middle age in the thin skin that stretches over my hands, the veins in my legs, and the faint (but growing) wrinkles around my eyes and mouth.  I feel it in the subtle aches and pains in my hips and back, my need for a decent eight hours of sleep, and my intolerance for unhealthy food.  This body is aging, and as it ages it becomes like a favorite pair of old jeans: frayed, a bit tattered, but oh so comfortable and familiar, like an old friend.  Even (dare I say it?) loved.  

I have always struggled with my weight since the onset of puberty.  I have never known what it is, in my adult life, to have space between my thighs, to not have these heavy folds on my back and belly, to be sleek and slender and light on my feet.  I will never know what that is in this life, and it is okay.  I love my softness, my bountiful curves, my lush and ample bottom.  This is who I am, and I am beautiful.  I am sensual, and made for loving and being amply loved.  I have no desire to be "skinny", I seek only to be healthy, and to nurture this body in healthy ways.  

No one else has this body, this unique and beautiful machine, this house of my soul.  I am learning to celebrate it, to honor and nurture and love my body like it was my spouse, for in a way it is.  My spirit is married to this body for this life, and nothing can change that save death.  And like an imperfect couple we have learned each other, grown familiar, and come to love one another.  I love this body, and this body loves and serves my soul the best that it can.  Body and spirit are imperfect, but together there is love.  This is happiness.  This is peace.  

I am coming to know and understand who I am on a deeper level as I do my personal work and dig into my inner landscape.  I am starting to understand the wounded little girl who rages inside at events long past that were out of her control, the bitter teenager who never really was allowed to come out and be like the rest of the kids, who never found her voice or fit in and who felt so powerless because of it, the jaded princess who believed in fairy tales and knights in shining armor only to be horribly let down by real life time and again, the sensual goddess, hidden and denied so long because of a restricted upbringing, the wounded beast with a broken heart that howls deep within.   They are all in there.  They are all me.  I take responsibility for each one.  I dig deep and uncover and reveal hidden places within that were long forgotten, or buried in grief or rage.  It is time to let the light in.  It is time to heal what I can., and what I cannot I am learning to temper and accept.  

I treat myself with love, honor, and respect, because I am deserving of that from myself.  Who else can love me better than I can love myself?  And how can I ever receive love if I cannot give it first?  You cannot give what you do not have, and once you give you open yourself to receive.  

I find as I grow older that I am tapping into a hidden river of peace flowing within me.  Sometimes the river is hard to find and I once again get caught up in my moods, the inner voices rattling the windows like old ghosts, but they always eventually settle again and once more I find that deep river and let it flow through me.  I know that as I get older still the river will be easier and easier to find, only a thought away from finding its flow.

No one said it was easy to be human.  In fact, being human can be the hardest lesson of this mortal life to understand and endure.  Simply being in your own skin can be torture, to have to live with yourself and your demons, your imperfect body and imperfect life.

But it can also be the sweetest taste of heaven to listen to the wind and the silence, or a great symphony orchestra performing a work of art.  To taste sweet summer berries on your tongue, not because you are hungry, but because it is beautiful to savor that rare sweetness.  To gaze upon a blazing sunset in simple awe of nature's palette, or the wonder of art pouring from your own hands. To feel the sensual glide of a lover's touch, the passion of a kiss, or the mere beating of your own heart.  

As for the wolves, I still love them as the wonderful beings they are, but I am no longer secretly jealous of them, obsessed with knowing their secrets.  I understand now that wolves are wolves, and people are people.  Different, and yet no more noble or perfect than the other.  It is in that acceptance of myself, in the entirety of my being, that I have come closer to what the wolves know than ever.  Wolves simply ARE; they do not struggle to be anything different.  If we can learn that with ourselves, to know who we are, to just BE who we are, all of it,  instead of always struggling to be someone, or something different, we may yet understand what the animals, the trees, the rocks, the flowers, birds, bees, fish, the very Earth herself knows.  The peace of simply being.

This is who I am.  This is being truly human.  I would have it no other way.