Here’s my contribution to herdirtylittleheart’s awesome #happybirthdayheart challenge.
I talk a lot about how Heart was one of the people pivotal in making me as brave(ish) as I’ve become. So, I wanted to do something super brave for this. It ended up sort of happening on the fly, but I’m thrilled with the result.
My vanilla friends and I took a crazy road trip to climb a crazy thing. Something you should know about me is that I hate hate hate hate hate heights. I didn’t think I’d actually end up going up to the top. But, somehow, I did.
I was so high on adrenaline and so ecstatic that I pulled my pants down to moon the distance I’d climbed and asked one of my vanilla friends to take a picture of my butt.
And you know what? She did it!
I maybe would’ve made a few different artistic choices had I been in charge, but here’s my offering to the Birthday Game. Recently, I was speaking to Heart about how awesome and brave people are being, and how inspirational it is to see what being brave means to each person. What I did here was an important step on two fronts in my life: conquering my anxiety-related fears and being my full, unabashed self in front of my friends.
On the way down, one of my other friends leaned over and said, “I think what you did was great. A lot of people would go up and carve their name into a tree or something. But this is something you can have from a time you did something wild and brave to always remember how that felt.”
So Happy Birthday, Heart. Your presence on this site is important and inspiring. Thank you for the excuse/opportunity you’ve given us this month.