Who We Are...

I guess this evolves for everyone.

Day by day, year by year...

Sometimes, often for me, it feels like more of a devolution than evolution.

If we are lucky enough to make it until middle life, we find that we are gifted with the questions of aging, of longevity we never believed we would see, of versions of ourselves that we aren’t quite sure what to do with, the task of assimilating who we are with who we were and what we shall become, lands hard at times.

I find myself, often, wondering what exactly am I supposed to do with myself now.  Solo, so it seems, due to both my impermature and temperance.  Wanting for a whole cacophony of things: youth but with wisdom, sex but with intimate connection, longevity so long as I can enjoy it.  These are the issues of middle age.  I am no longer young but I am not yet old.

I find myself fantasizing a great deal more about freedom and sexual exploration and accumulation and younger men.  Do I really want one or are they just easier to desire because, at least in my head, they lack complexity and commitment?  Is it just a cruel joke of aging that persons of your own age are just not as attractive as they used to be, and while the mind stays supple and youthful, so it is with bodily desires.  We know we age, but with it comes this duplicitous desire to see ourselves as still desirable to the young and less experienced.

It has been coming for some time now, this unremitting question of what do I want?  Where am I to spend my energy, my remaining vitality before it is gone?  Am I to chase the youthful feel in any way and manner I can?  Plastic surgery to make my desirability last just a little while longer?  Expensive clothes to make me feel pretty and fashionable?  Do I actually know myself better today?  Or is that just another one of my many and varied delusions?

Here is what I know:

I want to be sober.

I want to dance In my kitchen.

I want to be in nature as much as I can.

I want to read books and sit in sunshine.

I want to want as much as I am wanted.

I want to feel attracted and attractive in body, mind and spirit.

I want life to be exciting in ways it just hasn’t yet.

I want to trip the light fantastic as much and as often as I can.

I want to write about things that matter.

I want to travel to far away places to find parts of myself I haven’t met yet.

I want to love better than I ever have before.

I want to come to know myself and others more intimately and with renewing interest.

I want to remain intellectually and morally pliable; coming to my own standards and mores and living as true as I can to those principles I value and favor with an ability to thumb my nose to those who think me weird, immature, or desperate.

I want to decide what is best for me and then live according to that for as long as I can.

I want to spend as much time with my mom as I can.

I want to spend as much time with my children as I can.

I want to continue to try to love one man, even though I fail every single fucking time.

I do not want to give up.

I do want to continue to surrender.

I want my insides to match my outsides as much as possible.

I want to sleep soundly and comfortably.

I want to be able to sit still and look inward.

I want to wear the clothing that makes me feel good even when it feels outlandish.

I want to continue to work my body so that it remembers we are still here, and aging is unavoidable but strength and vitality is optional.

I want to have the courage to be the most me I have ever been and to love myself through that experience even as others reject me in my most current form.

I want to be impulsive and take risks.

I want to be as unafraid as I possibly can even when crippled with fear and anxiety and dread, I want to dig a little deeper and move forward anyway.

I want to swim naked and feel free in my body in ways that I have not been able to for most of my life.

I want to be a good friend that practices forgiveness and repair.

How much of this have I already achieved?

Most?

All?

None?

Isn’t the above list really a daily manifesto for life curation?  Shouldn’t I continue to reach for the brass ring, even if I know to my most intimate self that I will likely never actually reach it?

I want to continue to be as present as I can in this body, in this mind, in this spirit.  Until the demands and insistence of time takes it all from me in one fell swoop, or in tiny, infinitesimal cuts that I barely notice until it is way to late to course correct.  Life is for living.  And today, I guess what I want more than anything is to have the courage to show up, be real and love as much as I can, all that I can. To be kind to those that intersect my life.  And to respond to kindness and love with a feeling of being blessed and favored.

I guess that is who I am...someone who just keeps trying, failing and beginning again, over and over again, still...