Failure to Launch...

I am a launcher.  I don’t do still or down or resting well.  I, instead, tend to fling myself into whatever comes next or whatever I can get into next instead of sitting with the discomfort of whatever is happening in the here and now.

I am not a huge fan of pain or discomfort.  I have worked my ass off in this life to ensure that I am not in pain and not uncomfortable.  Of course, the way I have gone about it has, in reality, only brought me more pain and discomfort over the long haul.  I see that, now.

Recently, there have been a lot of things going on that would have made me launch myself into something:  dating, shopping, travel.  But the universe conspired to keep me still, at home and unable to do my habitual thing.

My dad went into memory care about a week ago, my children are in the process of leaving the nest, I am aging and not really loving that all that much.  These are all things that would have launched me into something, anything.

But the universe, through my daughter, saddled me with a litter of newborn kittens that require round the clock care.  Also multiple health crises and many trips to the vet have occupied my days.  I have had to be home and still.  Basically waiting to feed them and clean them up again.  Then that very same daughter came home from camp and brought whatever the fuck I have now and landed me squarely in bed for the past three days (and you thought perhaps I wasn’t writing because I was getting laid!  HAHA! Nope!  I don’t write because of sick too).

So I have been prevented from launching into anything new.  My life has been about cleaning, feeding kittens, working, and resting.  That is all I have had time for.  And I have found a gift in the stillness.  The house is quiet.  Everyone gone but me.  My life is my own, with few external demands, and the ones that I have on temporary hold while I recover from whatever bug I have that leveled me earlier this week.

I have spent a lot of time doing laundry (kittens are messy) and lying in bed.  It has been a gift of a different type and I am grateful, I suppose.  For all the lack of late.  There is a dearth of activity which would normally send me into a spiral.  But this time I seem to have the ability to accept it as being uncomfortable but what is supposed to be right now.

We say it is hell in the hallway.  Hard to wait for what happens next.  But I am finding some peace out here in the hall where things remain largely unresolved.  I am not clamoring for closure or openers.  I am not desperately attempting to change it all either.  I am just sitting with it and feeling the myriad of feelings I feel which have been, if I am honest, all over the place.

In my case, it has been a good thing, this failure to launch.  I am grateful for the peace within whatever phase of life I have transitioned into right now.  I am enjoying the tranquility of my current situation and allowing for the discomfort of all the new and unresolved to have its appropriate and rightful place in my life.

Of course I worry I will stall out here but I know that I won’t.  Time doesn’t stop and pushes us forward, and even though right now it feels like I am in some LAX holding pattern in my life, I know that I am not.  I just can’t see all the pieces being moved around me into some place I haven’t even thought I might go as of yet.  I can feel it.  I can feel everything being worked out and on.  I can feel my resources being marshaled for something else...of what I am not yet sure. But I know, I trust that I will be led to wherever I am supposed to be and for now, the lesson is in the stillness of home life.

Launching is fun, but exhausting.  Failing to launch is also exhausting but exhilarating in ways I never knew before...and I am finding peace within the uncertainty of my every day.  The precarious balance between life and death that I seem to have a ring side seat to currently.  And it is giving me a new perspective on life and living...and on launching, or in my case currently, failing to launch.