O Hai, Christmas Nostalgia.

Ashley recently wrote about the annual nostalgia that's felt when you're a twenty something and you travel home for the holidays - how it ebbs and flows and as she has gotten older, it doesn't feel as melodramatic. This morning, another friend tweeted, "At JFK JetBlue terminal and have not seen anybody from high school. Might finally be aging out of that particular inevitability." Then I decided to walk two miles across town in foot high snow to cuddle with a dog I know. During my snowy journey, When You Say Nothing At All came on Pandora in my headphones and jarred me back to my first flight home from University of Hawaii for Christmas during my freshman year, one of the first times I listened to it. I had decided that the song would be my song for my first-ever boyfriend. It was naively sweet at the time but looking back I realize that I only chose it because he never had anything nice to say - his kindest moments were silence.

I've come a long way since I was eighteen and the best thing that I thought I had going for me was a guy who could be mistaken for kind if he wasn't talking. I realize that sounds bitter but that's not my point. I'm way too old to be waxing nostalgic about the first guy that didn't treat me well. This one's about me-- I'm ten years older and working in a job I genuinely love in a beautiful town. I'm paying off my student loans in the next 16 months, maxing out a Roth IRA, nurturing the relationships that matter, and cutting toxic situations out of my life bit by bit. My personal net worth is higher than it has ever been. I am drinking less. I am walking to and from work and getting healthier. It's all by choice. I used to be convinced that I had to have a guy to validate whether I was a worthwhile human being. I've spent far too many years worrying about whether or not I'm lovable. Trying to be liked by everyone is as futile as absorbing a sea. When Christmas rolls around, I don't worry anymore about who will be in town when I'm home or who will be offended if I don't visit them or why someone hasn't called me yet either. I let it all go. I'm okay with it, all grow'ed up. I'll go home, clink wine glasses with my mother, drink all of the coffee that my father brews for ten people even though it's just the four of us, exchange in the usual self deprecating joke-off with my brother and take high-contrast phone pictures of the Rocky Mountains.

I'm a real woman, self-made. I'm flawed and obsessive, too hard on myself, quick to judge and faster to forgive, but above all stubbornly self-sufficient. Now that I'm living with The Guy, it's interesting to watch all of the insignificant stuff fall away with little to no effort on my part. When the blinds in our bedroom come crashing down after I yank on them too hard, he just smiles and says, "Babe, you're so strong." And 10 Christmases after that first plane ride home, I know I am... maybe for the first time.