Dear future hubster

 Dear future hubster, there is this cliché of women changing their hair right after a breakup, and I think often it can be real and true, when they need to do something bold, to make a drastic visual change that somehow represents the turmoil inside, and sometimes maybe they need to do things they have been putting off, for fear or experience of being seen as too loud, too different, too much.  Other times though, there are no drastic changes visible. I find that every time somebody walks out of my life - somebody I very much wanted to stay in my life - , and I go around in circles in my head about what went wrong and how did we end up like this , and I dissect my behaviour, I end up doing an exercise of "who am I". And not in a self-deprecating, low self-esteem, putting myself down way.  I usually start with the things (I thought) the person liked about me, the beautiful things they said about how I show up and what I do and how I move around in the world and how that ma...

 Dear future hubster,  in the past few weeks I was informed by multiple people that they'd thought I'm much younger than the 42 I actually am. And I had that weird feeling where I think I should take it as a compliment but - I don't?  And why should I? Why is looking younger considered a good thing? (And from when on? If I was 20, it would be rather concerning if I looked 10 years younger.)  "I thought you were much younger" actually just means that I don't match whatever is their concept of a woman at 42. Which in and of itself wouldn't be a big deal - although it is probably rooted in patriarchal and prescriptive normes of what women of a certain age shouldn't be doing. Wearing cat stockings, short skirts, not matching earrings, for example, and certainly not sporting an undercut, being blunt and impatient, or having a foul mouth. Although swearing is frowned upon at any age - it is oh so not ladylike.  That all of those are preconceptions that they...

Dear future hubster, please find below a non-exhaustive, non-linear, non-coherent, not-entirely-coincidental list of things that I would qualify as little wins: When the coach of the coach asks you what other sports you do. And then tells you to do the advanced version of the exercise. When your kiné - whom you're not-so-secretly crushing on - laughs at something clever you say. When you run anything over 5k for the first time since you've been dumped. When you first make it to 72 hours without crying. And then to a week. When you go on holidays hoping for interesting work to come back to, and then two weeks later there are lots of interesting requests in your inbox. When you get to do something your way because nobody knows any better - or because they trust that your way is good. When you call into a meeting with somebody for the first time and they are funny and competent and on top of their game and and friendly and relatable. When you find out that people know you for run...

   The cat was in the box; it was a thing and it wasn't, the box was a liminal space of yes and maybe and tease and care and excitement  and then and then the wave function collapsed and for a fraction of a moment the questions seemed to have disappeared  and then and then everything else collapsed  and and now I'm here among the ruins of the box, looking for an elaborate metaphor to say that the cat is dead