It’s about time for my midlife crisis and like everything else; I have a plan for it. But as with everything else, my resolve waivers. I have been learning, through fasting and laying down comforts I rely upon, that I am fully capable of giving up just about anything except for worry. (Amnesty box contribution: I am still working on Amazon. It has been my first and only full year of surrender failure. And just for the sake of comparison, I have given up all intoxicants, meat, sugar and wheat for a year or more. No sugar OR wine, but I can’t quit Amazon? Bezos is a jinn.). I worry that too many changes, even if it is for my own personal happiness, might take happiness from the ones that I love the most. My primary concern being that a radical change on my part could upend the foundational pillar of “who Mommy is” to my kids. But maybe that is not such a terrible thing. I feel like I have over compensated in many ways with my children for my own lack during childhood. I know I am not the only person who is aware that they are creating their own vicarious childhood for their children but does it anyway. And I am in no way trying to argue that since they have a good life, I should introduce them to a world of suck. I simply believe that they need to know that it exists. Enhance their societal situational awareness a bit. I have worked this hard to keep them separate from my suffering even though I can list every time I failed in excruciating detail. But I think it is time for them to bear witness to my humanness. No label, just a conglomerate of particles that behave in a specific manner in varied environments that are moving toward the same light they are. It would be an exercise in the exploration into the inner workings of commitment and relationships. It could teach them that we are not supposed to remain static personas but we are meant to evolve and flow in small ways and in big ways too. That is why love is an endless supply.
I am continually amazed by of all of the iterations and manifestations of love. Every time I think I can’t love someone more than I have, if I can bring myself to stretch through the discomfort I always find that there is still more love to give. Maybe it looks like grace or forgiveness, but it is most certainly love. I can explain to them how I know this for certain.
I can tell them have found that I can only get so angry, be so frustrated, get so sad then those feelings are transformed by a numbness that morphs the world into a hollow place. Where, sitting at the bottom of this pit, the walls I have built echo back every unkindness I have suffered and insecurity I have ever owned. I can show them what a desperately lonely and painful existence that is by opening the door to my own struggles. Maybe it will shift the load of growing up with someone so broken as their guide in this life of which I have not yet made amends as I may be fully unaware of the weight they carry. I doubt it, but anything is possible.
This midlife crisis is not going to be a change of hairstyle or picking up a new hobby. I have to completely change the way I think. And if that isn’t enough, I have to figure out how to love myself enough to do it. Cupid’s arrow only has one tip, right? Anyway, when I think of self love I think of people who taught me how to hate my body, doubt my divinity, and be ashamed my sexual nature or those who chose to exploit it. And more than that, I worry about how easily I can normalize my own self abuse because of theirs. I live moment to moment while worry leads me by the hand like a child. It promises to keep me safe and even though I know in my logical mind that no one and nothing can promise that, I still follow. It doubles as fear or anxiety most days, but on special days that end in “y”, it steals my sleep, suffocates my aspirations, and holds hostage my growth. Worry has been the arrow in the mental matrix I follow. It is my default. It defines my singular trance. Maybe, just maybe, by moving it all into the light, my children can grow a strategic understanding of the enemy. Not the enemies external to themselves who are drowning in their own confusions, but the potential to engage the self-destruct processes that lies within them.
