Because I have experienced more different and varied contexts which shake my center of reality.
Because I feel more confident in my body and in my identities even as they are shifting.
I have a less self-conscious way of simply being and sitting in a room.
My body has changed physical ways which seem to naturally reflect the queer and androgynous gender I have “felt to be” for a very long time.
I have been presented with my own failures in the same or similar form repeatedly over and over. Though I can fix my mistakes, I have been given the chance to repair or at least improve my response.
I have had the chance to confront and think about my fear of death; to consider the idea of dying, then, continued to live. And continued to live. And still have death in front of me.
I have experience the death of relationships, the death of people, and the birth of relationships and the birth of people. And practice makes these experiences not easier, but part of me.
Pain in my body, both chronic and new pain, has allowed me to confront my own capacity and dynamic capacity, to deal more seriously with limitations.
I have a better understanding of what I desire for my own boundaries, more honest about my own capacity.
I am better at identifying my own mistakes and apologizing.