me

As far as they know, I'm a runner.

Let slip or exclaim you're doing a marathon soon, and no matter how you couch it-- I am a beginner; I am slow; sometimes I walk-- that tends to be the impression. And while I give myself credit for the grammatical progression from, "I run" to, "I am a runner," applying the label is still a novelty, a shade of identity still complete with the tags.

Forty years later-- perhaps coincidence, perhaps not-- I'm doing something new, something that most of my circle rightly greeted with, "What?!" They're with me now, alternately bemused and impressed as they look through the lens of Before. No one, of course, will support me or appreciate the accomplishment more than those who saw it unfold, but there are other useful perspectives out in the world. A stranger's acceptance of my self-description, while far less substantial, is a different kind of confirmation, a little lesson in reinvention. It's not permission, but perhaps it's a signal.

In a sense--a debatable sense, but one that means something to me--I am who I say I am. When those who have no reason to believe but also no reason to doubt take me at my word, I find it oddly encouraging. It's a reminder, not that I'm pulling it off, but that by doing it, I become who I am.