Adapting...

It's been said we are products of our environment.  To a degree I would disagree. But, I do believe that we take something from every experience, use it, discard it, or store it for later.  I happen to be a master at impersonation, or imitation.  One little inflection in your voice that I pick up on, and you fall victim to my impersonation. It isn't a mean spirited imitation, it's from a comic perspective.  I enjoy people so much, and if they are funny, tell me a funny story, or we have an adventure that makes me laugh, I will relive the story for other people, regaling them in 3D, so they can feel the moment of humor like I did.  Probably could get me in trouble, as I can be horribly, politically incorrect.

I have an Hispanic girlfriend I recently met.  I LOVE her stories.  She has a very strong Spanish accent.  Her personality is so over the top and she is so real, that I can't help but admire her...and imitate her.  I love telling her stories.  In English, with a heavy Spanish accent.  Someday, I'm going to learn Spanish, and because I've practiced the accent so much, I imagine I will pick up the language fast. 

In the three short months I have lived in Phoenix, I have made an extraordinarily large group of friends.  I'm astounded by it really, especially in a group setting, when I look around and realize I know so many of the people at the party.  Not all are close friends of course, but I have gotten close to three or four people that have become very important to me.

I have done a complete about-face from the life I used to have in Washington.  In Washington, where I grew up and raised my children, I felt tremendous pressure to conform to fit it. I looked like the wives of our friends.  I ran in a circle where all of my friends went to the same places for coffee, (Starbucks) we all shopped at Nordstrom, got our nails done, our hair colored at the same place, knew the same people since we were kids.  Very few people in my circle, were new acquaintances.  We all tried to be like each other.  And we were.  We competed in our lives by the ease of our life.  We all vacationed in the usual places...Maui, Cabo, all fantastic vacations accompanied by luxury...fantastic restaurants, five star resorts, spa days....it was a great life.  I was fortunate.  I had a lot of material comforts that most people never even imagine to have.  I am grateful.  I feel fortunate.  I felt empty. 

One of my new and dearest friends here, has an enviable life to me.  She may not see it the way I do, but I love her philosophy of how she lives.  She used to be a corporate attorney with the luxury and trappings of money that epitomizes our country's version of success. Several years ago, she gave it up and walked away from the corporate world, sold her big house, banked some savings, bought a house and took off for two years to travel to exotic locations.  She didn't stay in five star hotels, she backpacked, stayed in hostels, met and lived among the people of these countries and accumulated a vast array of amazing experiences.  She came back to Phoenix, owns an amazing house where people love to gather, doesn't have a steady job, and instead does "projects" that net her enough cash to live the way she likes, and work about three days a week.  Amazing.  I could adapt to that.

Others that I have met, share a lot of the same views and philosophies about this country, our environment, with a deep sense of community and family. I feel as if I am learning something every day from these people.  I haven't lost my own identity in all of this. I still really love expensive shoes and handbags.  I still get my hair colored regularly, I still like my nails to be neat and clean, I still like to eat good food and drink great wine.   But, I am letting go of the things that seem less important now, things I had placed a lot of emphasis on previously.  Things like finding endless errands that make me spend money because I thought I needed the things to help me fit in.  Here, I am surrounded by realness.  I go to networking events that not only introduce me to new people but to new experiences.  I am like a kid walking through FAO Schwartz for the first time.  I am adapting to my new environment.  One that feels more like me.
 
 I always have thought of myself as a square peg in a round hole.  My personality is such that people either really like me, or they really hate me.  Not a whole lot of in between.  No one ever says, "Hey do you know Tam?"  expecting the response "Eehh..she's okay..."  They either gush or think I'm a bitch.

Every experience in our life can affect us in different ways.  I feel fortunate to be a natural optimist.  Maybe it is because I didn't have a tragic childhood that made me want to kill small animals or cut my wrists, but just maybe  bitch a little about the disfunction that most of us experience anyway.  The disfunction didn't ruin me, maul me or leave me incapacitated.  It made me adapt to my surroundings, to the environment in which I was raised.  It shaped me to be the person I am today.  The environment in which I raised my kids was, for the most part good.  I'm positive I wasn't perfect, but my kids had love.  They had acceptance.  They were a little spoiled, but it didn't ruin them.  They have adapted in their lives to their surroundings, and change daily as they mature into full fledged adulthood.

My kids are a little surprised at the way their mom is adapting and changing.  It isn't someone they recognize.  I barely recognize the old me any more.  I am finding myself capable of more empathy, less judgment, a greater capacity of acceptance for different people who came from such different backgrounds and circumstances, as well as a real need and desire for these changes to happen.  I am changing...I am adapting, I am becoming more like the people I spend time with and I am still imitating in 3D.  Some things never change.  A friend of mine posted this on Facebook yesterday...I love it.  "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro".  My kids would probably say I've turned pro in the weird department, because it is so different from the mom they knew.  But I say, I just adapted again.  I am like a chameleon, I adapt and change color according to my environment.  But I am still Tam, just as the Chameleon is still a lizard.  Inside, I've always been this way.