I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had.

-Jeanette Winterson

Adriana wrote a post the other day where she talked about her past as a brainy high schooler who didn’t know she was an artist. Because I spent every period of every day with her from seventh the twelfth grade, seeing her stunning high school art brought all the possibilities of elementary school and high school rushing back to me. The talents I might have explored if my path had curved thataway instead of thisaway. The millions of people I could be today if one encounter had been different or one piece of furniture was out of place during those in-between years.

I feel as if all the things I could have been or might still be are, in their way, part of who I am today, right now. I’m made up of my hopes and aspirations and narrowly escaped demises just as much as I’m made of flesh and hair and mucus, sitting and typing here in my apartment.

What else am I, other than a queer feminist Brooklynite empowerment coach photographer? What might I have been?

I’m an artist, like Adriana. Each day from seventh grade to twelfth, she and I sat across from each other, hunched over our artwork, seeing for each other the shadows and highlights that we couldn’t always see in our own work.

I’m a community organizer. I’m entrenched in New York City’s activist community, and I spend my free time volunteering at Bluestockings.

I’m a Seattleite. I live in Wallingford, and from my vast living room window, I can see ferries gliding back and forth across Puget Sound. I wear nubby green socks as I pad around the house, because it’s always chilly.

I live in San Francisco. I own a car, and I go camping along the California coast. I take sporadic trips up to Oregon, and sometimes I even visit the Olympic Peninsula to traipse through the rain forest.

I’m a singer. When people asked me what I wanted to be when I was little, I always said a singer or a writer. My high school senior project was a CD of musical theater throughout the 21st Century, and I originally majored in music in college.

I write things for a living, and I live between a tiny house on the West Coast and a studio apartment in Brooklyn. I bundle up my family of Mary and a pup and a babe and take them with me everywhere I go.

After encircling the globe on a round-the-world ticket, I’ve settled into a household of other queers in Northeast Portland. We grow a garden, and we have cats who jump on the counters when we’re gone. (We know because we see their paw prints beside the kitchen sink when we come home.)

I’m drinking sauvignon blanc on a lanai in Hawaii. I lean back and breathe in the light, floral afternoon. Waves carry me out and into myself, out and in again.

. . .

Who else are you, in your alternate realities? Who are the versions of you who might have been, or were, or may be someday?

My birthday is today (eeek!). I’m turning twenty-six, and I don’t know what to think of it. When I was little and playing house, I would always pretend to be sixteen. It was as if I couldn’t possibly fathom a more grown-up age than that. Now I’m sixteen plus ten years. I’m unsure what to do with that information, but I think I like it.

In other news, I’m realizing that it’s hard for me to celebrate myself. Not that I don’t do it every year. Every year, I’m excited when it’s April, and every year, I get a little more comfortable being okay with that excitement.

Still.

There’s so very much vulnerability in openly celebrating myself, you see. There’s the worry that others won’t join in, and I’ll just be standing there, celebrating myself, alone. (Though actually, when I put it like that, it doesn’t sound so bad.)

There’s the discomfort of being seen, and the navigation of finding ways to celebrate that don’t say, “Look at me!“, if being looked at isn’t exactly what I want. Some of us want to celebrate, but we don’t want the whole restaurant staring at us. You know?

There’s the bit about opening myself up to excitement, which also opens me up to the possibility (however slim or not-slim) that things will go terribly awry.

And then there’s the part about inviting others to join in. That’s the scariest part, to me. If I throw a party (or a celebration, whichever word you choose), there’s the terrifying chance that no one will come. Which really just has to do with people’s schedules, but it gives me the opportunity to take it all terribly personally and think that nobody likes me, as I’m wont to do.

So just like everything else in my life lately, celebrating my birthday is another chance to practice being myself, and liking myself. Tonight I’ll be writing, celebratorily (yes I did just make up that word; you can do that on your birthday), in the presence of my fellow Hybrid Writers. I’ll probably play some games (like Scrabble, which Mary already beat me at on Monday). And I may even break out my ever-so-sumptuous cheesecake recipe. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

. . .

Comment Love: I’m feeling really vulnerable about this, so just know that. I’d love happy birthdays and for you to join the celebration. I’d also love to hear about your own experiences with celebrating yourself.

A handful of weeks ago, I sent out my very first self-love letter to a special circle of Effervescence friends. It included some of my favorite tiny acts of self-love, along with an invitation for other people’s favorite self-loving acts.

Adriana (Friend of the Century and Very Talented Artist) wrote back with this spring-ey list of her favorite ways to show herself she cares. I wanted to share her list with you, so I dressed it up in rainbow. Enjoy.

What are your favorite little acts of self-love?

. . .

Oh! And yes: you, too, can sign up for self-love letters, and I’ll deliver sweetness and special stuff to your inbox every once in a while.