December 29, 1941.
I’m at the age where I cease to reform my tastes:
I accept what I find—within—without shame.
— Patricia Highsmith, “Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995.″ Anna von Planta (Editor). (Liveright, November 16, 2021)
Notes:
- Side Note: Patricia Highsmith was 20 years old when writing this in her diary entry. 20 years old! And here I am…still workin’ it…
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Live & Learn 
yes, yes and it feels so right
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i know she was 20, and it’s clearly taken me much longer to evolve )
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Oh so with you there Beth.
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Hhhmm … not reforming and being so self assured at that age may be more of a hindrance going through life. Im grateful for developing at my own pace.
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Now that’s wisdom.
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The right age without the complete acceptance of being who and as I am…
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Truth.
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Well, for us Catholic girls born in the ’50s, shame-lessly accepted inner tastes began and ended with black waterproof mascara! 👀 That’s our story and we’re sticking with it!
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Ha! Good one!
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Twenty! Must have been an overly serious young woman. I’ll stick to my own slow pace, thank you very much 😉
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Tortoise & the Hare!
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Haha! At different moments… 😉
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If there’s a ‘right age’ does that mean there’s a ‘wrong age’? No matter my age, when I release the need to reform my tastes and free myself from shame, I become more me — and that works just right for me because, no matter my age, shame is not becoming. 🙂 ❤
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Right age and Wrong age. So True Louise.
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And your reference to shame reminded me of:
Shame was a serpent coiled inside her stomach. It bit her again and again.”
Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees: A Novel (Bloomsbury Publishing; 1st edition (November 2, 2021)
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Wow! What a great quote. Thanks DK!
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OMG, what a quote. I know intimately somebody who stopped ‘shame in all forms’ at the age of 17….
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Wow. I’d like to meet her!
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It’s a him…. 😉
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Wow, now I’m so curious.
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It’s a strength and not a sign of weakness to be able to change one’s opinion and that goes for tastes too.
PH was a fantastic writer but a very bitter character with many traits I would never feel inspired to take as a lead….. I far prefer my own timing for development, thank you very much!
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She is quite a Character. I couldn’t and wouldn’t be her but I am fascinated by her Diary which is a day by day peak into her head.
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True enough. She had a brain worthy of dissection but I’d be afraid of what was stored in that fantastic cave. And she knew way too early what to think and didn’t ‘err’ from her route taken (Nazisism, Males, et al).
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Truth.
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Interesting when you know what she was grappling with–whether to be lesbian or bisexual when feeling that would be socially repugnant to many… She was intellectual, in NYCity, very attractive…alot going on for one so young and advantaged. So, for her, “taste” was a reference to her sexual preferences.
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Valerie, from what I’m reading, you are squarely on point.
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How lucky, if you can do that.
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