I remember the first time I felt true, deep, dark, heartbreaking loneliness.

It was when Jane was about two months old. She had acid reflux as a baby, and it was nightmarish. No amount of book reading or advice taking could have prepared me for what those months were like.

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I have always been a girly girl. Albeit, a girly girl with a potty mouth, but I’m working on this. For example, when I feel the urge to curse, I try to insert harmless words instead.

For instance, when a teenage driver from the local high school nearly plows into me head on because she hasn’t yet mastered the art of lighting a cigarette and driving in her own lane, I yell something like, “Trash can face sucking Kim Kardashian loving moron!”

Cause there’s really no cleaner synonym for moron. Also? If moron is the worst word Jane learns from me, I’ll stand on a mountain and declare victory.

But, I digress.

So I was thrilled when Jane wanted to wear my jewelry. And paint her toenails. And have “Snow White hair” every morning before daycare.

Shhh, don’t tell her it’s just a pony tail.

I’m not big on pageants, or beauty centered hobbies, but I think all women/girls need to be able to feel good about the way they look when they leave their house. Whether it’s lipstick, or a set of shades, or heck, your favorite mumu. Whatever floats your girly boat.

But after a while things took a concerning turn. She became dogmatic about not only her own appearance, but mine as well.

Every morning after she dons a skirt over her pants for daycare, and helps herself to the pink lip gloss in my makeup drawer, and examines herself in the mirror, she turns her intense little blue eyes in my direction.

She follows me into my closet.

“Wear dis dress,” she says.

“No,” I say.

“I don’t like those shoes,” she states.

“Leave me alone,” I reply.

Does this stop her? No.

Finally, I looked at her and said, “Thank you, but no thank you. I will dress myself. Go play with your toys.”

She pursed her little lips and said, “Ok. But wear the wed (red) necklace.”

I. Am. Not. Kidding.

So you can understand my lack of surprise this morning, after fixing my hair in what I thought would be an office acceptable version of a 1940’s style, when Jane sauntered into the bathroom, leaned against the sink and said, “Mom. Wha happened to you hair?”

I took a deep breath, braced myself, and said, “I curled it”

She huffed out her breath and said “It’s big.”

“It’s the south!” I rebutted.

And that’s when it hit me that I was debating the merits of big hair in the southern section of this country with a three year old. My three year old stylist. And not the sweet Rachel Zoe kind. My little darling is more of the Joan Crawford with a wire hanger kind.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to try to find a hat to wear over my “big” hair.

There’s nothing like the presence of daffodils and white flowering trees to signify spring is here.

Also, those white flower trees? They smell weird. And they make me sneeze. But that’s alright, because I’ll take it over heavy winter coats and icy roads any day. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I was done with winter back in December.

We took Jane to the park this weekend. She was thrilled. She ran around with colored hair extensions and a yellow tutu and reenacted all the scenes from Frozen. She even held up her hand and said, “No, leave me alone” when I tried to play with her.

Apparently, when you’re pretending the slide complex is your own personal castle, and you’re Ana trying to save Elsa, and you’re yelling “conceal don’t feel” over and over, the presence of your parents is quite the playtime buzz kill.

Sidenote: If I have to hear Let It Go one more time my ears will never stop bleeding. Please Idina Menzel… go away. Just for a little while so my ear drums can heal.

What else.

Jane turns three soon.

I’m working on a new book, which means I spend a lot of time staring at the ceiling. And asking my mom and sisters questions like, “What’s another word for filet? Not like the noun, but the verb?”

We’ve fended off the stomach flu twice in two months.

 I discovered that my hips are the perfect size to get stuck on the kid slide at Jane’s park. I also discovered that I could care less and ate a huge steak that very night.

We paid a visit to my college alma mater, where I wandered around the campus remembering what it was like to be 19. For me it meant feeling confused most of the time and bad judgement resulting in bleach and blonde hair. Thankfully that ended quickly. It’s like the t-shirt says. Brunettes: someone has to be smart.

So that’s my spring update. No European vacations or fancy-ness. Just bleeding ears while the dulcet tunes of Let It Go permeate the air in our home yet again, for the fifty billionth time.

Thanks a lot Disney.

Now I’m off to reattach the rainbow hair extensions on Jane’s hair before she leaves for daycare. Because as she puts it, “I need my long hair, I really NEED it Mom.”

I’m an all or nothing kind of girl.

This is both good and bad.

When I throw myself into something, I go all out. I eat, sleep, and breath it. I wrestle with it, I work on it, I don’t stop until it’s good enough, clean enough, done enough. I’m like this with writing, with myself, with relationships, with everything. I go as hard as I can, for as long as I can, until I can’t go anymore. And when I can’t go anymore… I’m done. When my battery pack goes black, it’s usually all she wrote.

For the past six (?) years, I’ve pushed petal to the metal with this blog. I wrote a book. Actually, I’ve written two. And all of it was intimate. Non-fiction. My life for all the world to see if they wanted to. I don’t know why I do that. I think most writers would agree it’s a compulsion. I suspect it’s because we just have so much inside our heads that if we don’t get it out, somehow, we won’t function right. Or something like that.

I’ve been glad to do it. I’ve been blessed to do it. I’ve been flattered and touched that there are people out there that care enough to read the things I’ve written.

But after this last round of writing about postpartum depression, I retreated. I stopped blogging. Instead of all, I gave nothing. I didn’t understand why, until now. I retreated to be private. I feel like I haven’t given myself permission to be private in a very long time. I gave myself permission to just live my life without constantly assessing it, photographing it, analyzing it, writing about it. I gave myself permission to go through hard times without feeling guilty for putting on a happy face for the world.

Truthfully, it’s been good. I’ve relished spending weekends without wondering where my next blog post would come from. Or writing about my most intimate thoughts and fears. Instead, I just lived. I went with the flow. I didn’t try to make the food I was eating look pretty so I could take a picture of it. I didn’t try to phrase my emotions into just the right sentence so others could understand it.

As my Angela would say, I went to ground. Like a fox.

That was her favorite animal (long before hipsters made them trendy).

So I’m sitting here. It’s early morning. There’s snow covering our neighborhood. Jane is sleeping down the hall.

It’s my birthday.

I’m 34.

I think maybe it’s time to stop being an all or nothing girl. I think maybe now there’s room for a happy middle. I think I can still blog and write without being consumed and stressed. I think there’s room to write my thoughts, and still be private too. I think I can eat breakfast, and take a picture of it, and not worry so much if it makes a pretty picture.

I think it’s also time that I stop putting a pretty picture on things that aren’t pretty. I do that a lot. I’ve done it for a very long time. I’m so very tired.

If I’ve learned anything in the past 34 years, it’s that life isn’t always a pretty picture. It’s not all or nothing. It’s a little bit of everything all mixed into one bowl. The good, the heartbreaking, the exciting, the sad, the laughing, the depressing, the beauty, the feeling. It’s all in there together.

So I’m still here. I’ll still blog. I’ll just do it with a happy middle, instead of all or nothing. Because as I sit here this morning, looking out the window at my neighbor’s house, the roof covered in white, I think that’s what this year will be about. 34 is whispering in my ear that change is good. She says that privacy and transparency are two sides of the same coin, and they’re both good. She says that I don’t have to be all or nothing anymore.

34.

I think I like her.