Transformation and Aging

Maybe some years are just meant to be horrible, and transformative.

I'd venture a guess that for most people that year comes after some major event.  Divorce, marriage, childbirth, death.  I can see where after life-changing events something needs to change within yourself to get you to the place where you can do this new form of your life.

Maybe the people who are stuck, depressed with life, disengaged, are those who never made the leap to what life is rather than what they thought it would be.

So perhaps it's a blessing.  Perhaps it's a part of my character that while 35 has been horrible, I've fought it every step of the way, starting with saying "this isn't working, so I'm going to stop."

I love my family and friends and I love how supportive they are of me.  But they will never be as supportive of me as he was.  I know my friends and family love me incredibly, but they will never love me like he did.  It's time I stopped expecting them to.

I will never again matter to anyone else in the same way I mattered to him, so it's time I started mattering to myself.

The whole point of building a new life is figuring out what works, and doing that.  Fortunately for me, this has coincided with the year I turned 35.  I am no longer a young woman. I am no longer even in my early 30's. For a girl who grew up envying her 80-year-old grandmother's life, this is freeing. 

I've been making strides to this point for almost five and a half years now, but somehow 35 has made me say it's time.  It's time to finally start living for myself.

God I missed this...

God I missed this...

I missed the cooking dinner with a good friend.  The whole "are you buying meat or am I?" "Your place or mine?" "What happened to you this week?"

I missed that.  It may be an odd thing to miss.  But when you're widowed, or simply living singled, ... no one cares.  No one asks.  Your life just...  happens.   It's nice to have someone to touch base with, say hey, I got the meat, Hey I'll be over...

And the just chilling and the companionship.  People underestimate that.  Hell, I underestimate that.  That hey, you just need someone to talk to, to shoot the shit with, to look up stupid videos on youtube with. 

"Hey how was your week?" goes a long ways when no one's asking the question.  The "Really, so what happened with... " is a golden question. And it just doesn't get asked.

Would you like to ask?  Because there's an answer.

Because here's the flip side.  I have an awesome life.  I love my job, I love my daily chill time.  But here's the whole story - no one cares.  And as much as it is to know how awesome you have it, how much you love your life, having someone to share it with just makes it that much sweeter.

And that's the flip side.

Year Five

And Year Five sucked.

That's all there is to it.  Someone recently pointed out to me that sometimes we live in our heads a little too much and the impact becomes more intense.  Um... yeah, that's me.  But Year Five is finally over!!  And here's the thing - I couldn't see a Year Five when this happened.  When I thought, well what would be an acceptable time to mourn, five years seemed like too long, even to me.  And here it was.

Being done with Year Five now, I do feel like a weight is lifted.  I do feel like things have settled into my new life.  I can look around my house and recognize that it's not the house he knew anymore.  Granted, many of the things I've changed are things we wanted in our someday home.  But as long as this is where I'm living, why not make my someday right now?

To catch up chronologically... New Year's Eve was great - work and then football all New Year's Day, Valentine's I hit a hard point that more or less lasted until just have his anniversary.  Vacation in March was grand to get away (as always), see a good friend, most of my family, and look at an ocean for a while.  His anniversary was refreshingly normal, then just one melt-down a week later (I'm allowed).  Likewise our anniversary was normal and... here we are.

This is my life.  They say it comes in time, and I still think I'm too tied up in him to be completely healthy, but that is why I've reached out lately to try to figure out if I am or if I just have unreal expectations.  I'm loving my job, what I do for a living and where I am geographically.  I realized on vacation how much of my joy comes out of traveling, so I'm trying to make that happen more.  And my reading list is insane.

That's what life looks like, today.