40 something
Being 40 is bizarre, but only because it seems like life is happening faster than I can catch up to it at this point. My gauge is the people who I went to high school with or knew as a kid. I see their faces changing on facebook and I know I must be evolving in front of them in the same way. It is easier to avoid the changes happening in your own body because I am not standing around looking in a mirror all day....on purpose! Ha.
40 is putting on moisturizer every morning after your shower, its wearing glasses for the first time while reading because "WOW is that so much clearer!!!" Its not taking things as seriously and taking other things very seriously because you've arrived at this point in your life where drama doesnt have a place and life is too short to waste on the negative weighing you down. 40 is watching all of the great comedians and actors you grew up loving trasition to heaven, Its knowing in your gut that you will blink and you will be the grandparent. I thought that by 40 I would have arrived somewhere, that things would pan out somehow but the bar just keeps getting raised and all the tools in my tool box that I have aquired are capeable of bigger things and I am being called to use them. I also thought I'd get on some type of invisible track that would direct my life instead of off roading it and winging it, but I have come to find that life will always be some form of off roading.....full of pot holes and adventure. You are propelled forward with the breeze in your hair and then the next month you are stuck in a grid locked traffic jam. Its just life. Ive learned that the more flexible I can be , or rather the less rigid, the better I do. The world is ran by humans after all, fully capeable but eternally flawed.
I think it is because I work part time at a nursing home that I am keenly aware that what could meet me in the end is something I never want. You would have to drag me into a nursing home environment to live. There is no breathing there. It is just a place to wait, to reexamine everything you did and did not do until you cant anymore. This environment highlights being 40. It makes me depressed and makes me want to really live all at the same time. It makes me want to have another baby before I cant....because I loved being a mom to my babes so young but also like starting over in the middle and extending all the best parts of what I have already experienced and loved so much.
But there is severe reality attatched to that....are you too old? Do you have the energy? Is that going to tie you down? and Uh P.S. you dont even have health insurance, how would THAT work? The reality check of my thoughts doesnt keep me from having a whicker basenette in my extra room and drawers full of baby blankets and sweet little clothes....Just....in....case.
At 40 I am still winging it, still have nothing in savings and borrowing from my investment if I get in a bind. I just now hired an accountant to make sense of my deranged way of filing my taxes. My car has over 102,000 miles on it and I still owe 17k and its upside down in value because I drive too much for work....and I am not sure how to make that all work and the whole time the clock goes TICK TOCK while my mileage climbs higher....and yet I have never been more successful in work in my life. Go figure. Sometimes I feel like a college kid juggling the responcibilities of 3 adults. I do all the mom stuff, all the house stuff, I manage my own life and work, as well as someone elses...and yet some days it is utter chaos, and I have to pause to regroup and refocus on what is the most important thing to tackle in that moment.
40 is watching my kids grow to my same height at just 12 years old and reminding me of how far away from an infant they are. Even from the moment you cannot pick them up anymore, it is a heavy reality. This little being that I cradled and sheltered in my arms is now inconsoleable let alone holdable....and I relish the times they still crawl into bed next to me and lay their head on my chest and say "I love you Mom." It reminds me that they are in there....those little beings that once looked to me for everything. I am hoping they always need me, but in the way of comforting. My real hope is that they are becoming fully functional , incredibly successful human beings and that they thrive at this thing called life. One day I will no longer be in my 40s....they will be the ones turning 40.... and by then I'll be in my 70's and I'll laugh at this posting and what Ive said here, Thinking I was still such a child and I should have been able to play more....even if only in my mind.
I dont know yet what 42 holds, but I am in no hurry. Seems like your body aches in one way or another at 40 and if you just turn the wrong way when loading the groceries into the car, you could tweak your back...You still long to be desired but wittness so many people older than you that obviously dont give a crap or the flip side...those who are so obsessed with staying "young" that it freaks you out. You have windows of intimacy that make you lose all reality...and losing reality is always great. More of that please....but life is busy and you dont always make time to lose it.
Most of all it lurks in the back of my mind that my mom died at 49. I think my Nonnies Dad died in his 40s too. I hear about random women dying in their sleep...and she was only 40 something....with 3 kids in elementary school....or I hear about guys in their late 40's dropping dead of a heart attack. There is this weird highlighted awareness of death at this age. I dont think I ever even acknowledged it at all before now....but everytime I go to an estate sale....where it is painfully obvious that all of someones belongings have been carefully laid out and priced....I get this morbid feeling that I never got before, and most of the time I feel sad at how ordinary their collection of things is....without any real soul to them, maybe even the bare necessities. I think about how later in their life no one ever came over and now today, after they have died there are hundreads of people wandering around eyeing their left behind belongings.
I think too much still and feel too much in a way that leaves me feeling isolated. Especially if I go long enough without talking to a like minded person who thinks too much too. Maybe I will never come to the point where I truly feel seen and understood in my life. Maybe that is only a job for Jesus. Or maybe by 80 I wont have a need for that anymore. That makes me only halfway there. Only halfway there is good. I cannot forget that ultimately we are HOMEWARD BOUND. Not meant for this earth, only visiting...and I am blessed to have experienced 41 years so far. Blessed to have a story and so so much more.
~C
40 is putting on moisturizer every morning after your shower, its wearing glasses for the first time while reading because "WOW is that so much clearer!!!" Its not taking things as seriously and taking other things very seriously because you've arrived at this point in your life where drama doesnt have a place and life is too short to waste on the negative weighing you down. 40 is watching all of the great comedians and actors you grew up loving trasition to heaven, Its knowing in your gut that you will blink and you will be the grandparent. I thought that by 40 I would have arrived somewhere, that things would pan out somehow but the bar just keeps getting raised and all the tools in my tool box that I have aquired are capeable of bigger things and I am being called to use them. I also thought I'd get on some type of invisible track that would direct my life instead of off roading it and winging it, but I have come to find that life will always be some form of off roading.....full of pot holes and adventure. You are propelled forward with the breeze in your hair and then the next month you are stuck in a grid locked traffic jam. Its just life. Ive learned that the more flexible I can be , or rather the less rigid, the better I do. The world is ran by humans after all, fully capeable but eternally flawed.
I think it is because I work part time at a nursing home that I am keenly aware that what could meet me in the end is something I never want. You would have to drag me into a nursing home environment to live. There is no breathing there. It is just a place to wait, to reexamine everything you did and did not do until you cant anymore. This environment highlights being 40. It makes me depressed and makes me want to really live all at the same time. It makes me want to have another baby before I cant....because I loved being a mom to my babes so young but also like starting over in the middle and extending all the best parts of what I have already experienced and loved so much.
But there is severe reality attatched to that....are you too old? Do you have the energy? Is that going to tie you down? and Uh P.S. you dont even have health insurance, how would THAT work? The reality check of my thoughts doesnt keep me from having a whicker basenette in my extra room and drawers full of baby blankets and sweet little clothes....Just....in....case.
At 40 I am still winging it, still have nothing in savings and borrowing from my investment if I get in a bind. I just now hired an accountant to make sense of my deranged way of filing my taxes. My car has over 102,000 miles on it and I still owe 17k and its upside down in value because I drive too much for work....and I am not sure how to make that all work and the whole time the clock goes TICK TOCK while my mileage climbs higher....and yet I have never been more successful in work in my life. Go figure. Sometimes I feel like a college kid juggling the responcibilities of 3 adults. I do all the mom stuff, all the house stuff, I manage my own life and work, as well as someone elses...and yet some days it is utter chaos, and I have to pause to regroup and refocus on what is the most important thing to tackle in that moment.
40 is watching my kids grow to my same height at just 12 years old and reminding me of how far away from an infant they are. Even from the moment you cannot pick them up anymore, it is a heavy reality. This little being that I cradled and sheltered in my arms is now inconsoleable let alone holdable....and I relish the times they still crawl into bed next to me and lay their head on my chest and say "I love you Mom." It reminds me that they are in there....those little beings that once looked to me for everything. I am hoping they always need me, but in the way of comforting. My real hope is that they are becoming fully functional , incredibly successful human beings and that they thrive at this thing called life. One day I will no longer be in my 40s....they will be the ones turning 40.... and by then I'll be in my 70's and I'll laugh at this posting and what Ive said here, Thinking I was still such a child and I should have been able to play more....even if only in my mind.
I dont know yet what 42 holds, but I am in no hurry. Seems like your body aches in one way or another at 40 and if you just turn the wrong way when loading the groceries into the car, you could tweak your back...You still long to be desired but wittness so many people older than you that obviously dont give a crap or the flip side...those who are so obsessed with staying "young" that it freaks you out. You have windows of intimacy that make you lose all reality...and losing reality is always great. More of that please....but life is busy and you dont always make time to lose it.
Most of all it lurks in the back of my mind that my mom died at 49. I think my Nonnies Dad died in his 40s too. I hear about random women dying in their sleep...and she was only 40 something....with 3 kids in elementary school....or I hear about guys in their late 40's dropping dead of a heart attack. There is this weird highlighted awareness of death at this age. I dont think I ever even acknowledged it at all before now....but everytime I go to an estate sale....where it is painfully obvious that all of someones belongings have been carefully laid out and priced....I get this morbid feeling that I never got before, and most of the time I feel sad at how ordinary their collection of things is....without any real soul to them, maybe even the bare necessities. I think about how later in their life no one ever came over and now today, after they have died there are hundreads of people wandering around eyeing their left behind belongings.
I think too much still and feel too much in a way that leaves me feeling isolated. Especially if I go long enough without talking to a like minded person who thinks too much too. Maybe I will never come to the point where I truly feel seen and understood in my life. Maybe that is only a job for Jesus. Or maybe by 80 I wont have a need for that anymore. That makes me only halfway there. Only halfway there is good. I cannot forget that ultimately we are HOMEWARD BOUND. Not meant for this earth, only visiting...and I am blessed to have experienced 41 years so far. Blessed to have a story and so so much more.
~C
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