50 At 50: Looking Forward

This has been a difficult week in Cerveau de Moi. There has been a lot of upheaval, a lot of wistfulness and sadness, and yet some good in it as well. It gave me reason to reflect, and as I am wont to do, I meandered down a few paths.

It is still mind-boggling to think I am going to be 50 in about 7 months. For a couple of decades now, I've been 27 in my brain. There's always been this disconnect with my age and me -- as a kid, I was the little old lady in the bunch. Too serious, too mature. Now that I'm middle-aged, I don't feel it -- I feel much less serious. My body tells a different story, too many years of wear and tear and so so many years of fighting myself. I think I've moved myself up to a mental age of about 33 now.

When I was in my 20s, OH THE ANGST! OH THE EXISTENTIAL CRISIS! OH THE MELODRAMA!! To think of that time in my life, I'm actually quite sad at how much energy I expended in navel-gazing, and about things that weren't worth my time. I read my journals from those last couple of years in college and through my twenties, and I want to both laugh and cry. I laugh because again, THE DRAAAAAAMAAAAAAAH and so much of it self-induced!  I cry because I want to grab my younger self, and to tell her to snap out of it, that he's not worth this much emotion, that your mama is not the arbiter of your worth, that you don't have to live life settling -- DIDN'T YOU SWEAR YOU WOULDN'T? -- and yet, here you are. I wish I could take that girl who was so lost at 23, 24, 25.... and remind her earlier of who she was, and not to lose that person.

But because of that, my 30s were filled with rescue: rescuing my self-worth, my essence, my soul, my health, my career. I started with a slow crawl out of a tomb, shook off the cobwebs, unwound my graveclothes, and started living more. I remembered the young girl I'd been in college and resolved to find her again. I decided my health was worth saving. It wasn't always easy and it was one step forward, three back sometimes, but I arrived at 40 happy and becoming fulfilled. I finally started feeling comfortable in my own skin.

My 40s were life's way of saying, "Mmmm, not so fast there, hoss." Healthy was about to be a relative term. At 42, I had a cancer scare (that ended up literally being nothing, just "smudgy film"). At 43, it was a year of headaches that would not go away and a slew of work stresses that just exacerbated the issue. Worse, I had these nagging feelings that things were not as bright for me as they once felt. At 44, I was under such stress that I broke out in shingles. At 45, I had foot surgery and a continuing downward spiral pas de trois with anxiety and depression. At 46, the losses began piling up: my mother and an aunt in just 8 weeks. And losing my faith in people to do the right thing. At 47, more losses: my dog, another aunt, a beloved artist, and then my brother all within 9 months. At 48, I began holding my breath every time I had a twitch, wondering if I was the next one whose picture would be X'd out in some grand scheme of the cosmos. All along I was again losing my battle with the bulge -- and swearing it was going to get better. Right. I finally turned 49, and on January 1 of this year, I exhaled heavily when I hadn't lost anyone else in my immediate circle that year.

But on the decade as a whole, I gained just as much as I lost: I gained perspective and clarity about what really matters. I gained a completely new appreciation for my family, who rallied around me in my darkest moments. I gained friends for whom music was a lifeblood, as much as it remains for me. I gained a lot of compassion each time my heart was crushed, because it broke up the crusty outer shell and allowed my heart to grow all the more. I gained a sense of now-or-never. I had to really start living again. The years were no longer on my side...... I rediscovered my love for live music. The backbone that finally emerged around age 35 became galvanized.

What do my 50s hold? I don't know. I have some expectations, but if nothing else, I've learned not to count on anything - and not to count anything out either. I'm in this last year of my 40s having literally just gone through another head-spinning transition (one which caused a pretty decent spike in my anxiety). I know that whatever awaits me, I will meet the challenge head-on. What other alternative is there?