Middle Life...

It kind of feels like some sort of realm cross of JRR Tolkien and JK Rowling.  There are four houses:  The House of Pickleball, The House of Sourdough, The House of Plants and Birds and The House of Protein and Strength Training.  

So random.

But so true.  I now have friends in each of these houses.  My House is the House of Protein and Strength Training.  I do not play pickleball (mostly because I do not like the word and also my hips are shot).  I wouldn’t know how to make a loaf of sourdough or most other things in the kitchen and I also have no interest.  I do love plants but that is not something new to middle age.  This has been a life long interest so, doesn’t count now.  And birds, while I love them and have owned several, I am not into birds, at least not yet.  Maybe when I have strength trained myself into a wheelchair, then, then I will be into birds.

Anyway...

Middle life is weird.  We are all screwed up.  Mentally we feel 30 something.  Our bodies are regelated to parts:  my heart is probably about 45, my feet 65, my face (not 55 but this is almost a daily evaluation, somedays I swear I look 80), my boobs 38, legs 29, my brain vacillates between being 13 and 55, with large windows of time that I can’t figure out what I am forgetting on purpose and what I just can’t remember at all.

It is a weird place to live.  I guess, though, I am happy that I do not feel 55 all over.  And even more grateful that I don’t look 55, although 55 is really the new 40.  Well, at least that is what I tell myself.

It is a very strange thing indeed to have this much younger person living in your head, feeling somewhat trapped by a body that feels like it is aging with a rapidity that is so unfair.  How can I be this old?  When did it happen and why do I feel like I missed so much of it?  I mean I was there the whole time, why do I feel like there is an entire decade I am missing?  And no, I am not talking about the 13 years I spent drinking to oblivion, those years I remember all too well.  Which is mostly a function of the age I was at the time, if I was drinking like that at 40 something, I wouldn't remember shit.

Rather, I am talking about those childrearing years, the married years.  They are all just a blur.  I am not sure how my kids got to be adults, I mean, I know I was there, but it really feels almost surreal.  I am filled with equal parts of a desire to go back and unwind it and do it all over again, and a very strong desire to never, ever have to do that again.  See?  Middle life is fucking weird.

I know in the long (if you are lucky) slog towards death, we lose a bit more of functionality every single day.  We can see without glasses, then we can’t, then the numbers just keep going up on our readers until we are literally rendered completely useless to read any print smaller than THIS.

For me I feel like every day I regress a little more mentally and progress a little more towards being able to do less.  It is a weird dynamic when you can feel your life and body slipping away from you while mentally your mind feels completely transfixed in some sort of perpetual adolescence.  

I am not sure I ever understood the middle life crisis thing, but I do now.  I totally get why people leave their marriages and run towards some younger, hotter version of sex and love.  I get it.  I mean, I also get how much it hurts if you are perhaps the more mature person, who has made peace with your lot and doesn’t feel the need to bang a 20 something year old. Maybe that should be how we select our partners: how are you going to deal with middle life? Except even if we knew enough back then to ask that question (which we don't) none of us knows until we get there...

We all have a different way of dealing with our own mortality.  And none of them are wrong.  Pickleball isn’t wrong, neither is sourdough, or birds or plants or counting protein grams like they are pounds on the scale.  Compulsive working out isn’t a crime either but they all serve to distract us from the absolute truth that death comes for everyone.  And there is little productive measures we can take to stave it off and no one can out run it.

It is a weird time indeed when you start losing people in your age bracket.  Tragic accidents, cancer, and other health related issues begin to be part of your every day over your objection and permission.

I guess what I am saying is that I feel like I am walking through some sort of middle earth in the land of Hobbits and magic and good and evil on the daily.  Sometimes it feels like I have way too much time and it makes me feel like I have lost the plot.  And other times, it feels like the sands of time are slipping recklessly through my fingers and no amount of clutching and grasping will do anything to stem the flow.

I guess really middle life is about standing still while you watch things be added and taken away on a daily basis.  Your friends, your health, your abilities, your interests, your children, your spouses, everything is in a constant and unremitting state of flux.  It is like we stalled out on the apex of the mountain and can now see, with a brutal clarity, all that we shall never have again, while also being able to view all that is yet to come...and not really loving that being our future lot.

I do my best to maintain a positive attitude.  Mostly I do this by a staunch refusal to accept that I am 55 and so involve and entertain myself by saying stupid shit like, “I am identifying as 28.”  I am not 28. No part of my life is 28.  My entire life is 55.  Whether I want to believe it or not.  Me dating 28 isn’t going to change anything.  

I will say it is an interesting time to be alive though.  I wake daily with an astute clarity about who and what I am, all while also having an absolute almost insane impulse to cash it all in, move into a camper van, and disappear.  And I will fully own, this is an almost daily risk.  Placing me in a pickle which sours my ability to enjoy the flora and fauna while I mindless drink protein shakes on my way to the gym...

Yeah,  I just wrote that...

And I am not even sorry...

Yet another benefit of middle life, I give so very few fucks anymore.  Say what you will, think what you like, I am over here, building my escape camper van that will only cost about $250k...

Don’t be surprised when the day comes that the dog (and cats) and I abandon everything we know and spend the rest of our lives traipsing about the world in our bikini, taking photographs and giving absolutely no fucks about pickleball, sourdough, plants and birds or protein and the gym.  Those are the preoccupations of middle life that quickly give way to either an acceptance of your life as it is or a wholesale departure from all you know...

The best part of it all, is that it is all up to us. No one is coming to save us...it is just all 100% up to us.

Again, still...

I guess I just wish I would have known this earlier.