“All we’ve got is this moment” - Michael Hutchence

Well here we are.  Three days into 2021.  I’m sitting here alone, save for my two dogs laying by me on the sofa, patiently waiting to be walked.  He left an hour ago, drinks at a friend’s house beckoned, which was probably more appealing than a Sunday afternoon at home with me while I “angry-clean”.

Maybe angry-clean is a stretch.  But I am perpetually frustrated by this feeling of suffocation in our home.  Stuff.  Everywhere.  Filling every conceivable space.  I have too many clothes and far too many pairs of shoes for a world that offers only seven days a week.  And on five of them, I wear a work uniform.  I gave a big bag of clothes to a friend today, some still with tags on.

I’m still emotionally unpacking 2020, yearning to let it go.  LET IT GO.  I think that will be my theme as I begin this year still feeling a little fragile at 49.  I can’t believe I’ll be 50 at the end of this one.  A number I contemplated 25 years ago that I would never reach, by circumstance or by design, I wasn’t sure.

I want to get there.  But.....I want to be here NOW.  I have come full circle again on all my anxieties and worries, thank you 2020.  Now I know the biggest reason I feel so constantly fragile is I live in the past and fret for the future.  I can’t do another 12 months of it.  I can’t do another ONE.  It’s adding to my claustrophobia.

For the last three days, every time I have felt myself ruminating on something bothersome I have told myself:

Take a deep breath.

What is happening right now?

I think about where my hands are.

I focus on where my eyes have rested.

I remind myself this is all there is.

Whatever it is that’s stressing me out, whatever conversation I am building in my mind, is fiction.  It’s wasting my brain.  It’s futile.

Sometimes I wonder if it might be easier to just be numbed.  Be fuzzy.  Dull the sharp edges.  But I see him nearly every day, doing that to himself in one way or another.  I don’t want to live like that.  Facing life head on is the only way that works for me, no matter how painful.  I don’t know life without pain.  But I love to contemplate what it might feel like.

Who might I have been, if I’d had two parents my whole life?  To have been part of a stable core family of healthy individuals?  Who might I have been if I’d been raised without  money worries?  Who might I have been, if I’d chosen another career path sooner instead of allowing it to choose me?

Who indeed.  Does it sound like a midlife crisis?   I’m on about my fourth now.  I’m used to them.  I’m used to life shaking me hard by the shoulders and taking something I love.  Being forced to let go, instead of actively choosing.  That’s not what this is.  It’s not even me, letting go of me.  I’ve done that many times before too.

I think it’s about me refining what is already there.  

I read a quote by Daniel Keyes:  I don’t know what’s worse; to not know what you are and be happy or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.

That about sums me up today.  Happy to be me, but awfully fucking lonely.