HappyComeLucky

“But feelings can’t be ignored, no matter how unjust or ungrateful they seem.”

Anne Frank

140 days.

I have 140 days until a landmark birthday. In so many ways, I am very much at ease with aging. I joke about it, will say things about youngsters today, joke about creaking joints and dodgy hearing. But really, I’m very comfortable with me. I never did do the getting fit and slim thing that I had set as a target before my last landmark birthday. I know better than to set a target like that with only 140 days to go.

I’m quite excited in lots of ways. I’m using it as a personal arse kicking to get over my fear of rejection and failure and actually plan some fabulously fun celebrations. I avoid doing this normally because of previously being crippled with fear that no-one will turn up – there is a sob story attached to that but I’ve chucked it in the bin of the past.

140 is a lot of time and very little time. I really don’t know if any of my plans will be possible with the current situation. It’s not looking particularly hopeful. I need to decide what to do about that and not let the lack of certainty stop my ideas in their tracks.

140 days until a landmark birthday, AKA a totally arbitrary marker of time in my life. I’m happy getting older, but today I realised something. My highs and lows have been more of a roller coaster recently. I am so very happy in so many ways that it seems confusing that I often dissolve into tears in quiet moments. My contentment fleetingly disappears and I feel desperately in need of what I can’t have.

I’ve made a lot of choices in my life. I’ve prioritised stability and security for my children. It works and it’s a calm arrangement but it isn’t without cost to me.

My approaching landmark has really shone a light, at a subconscious level first, at the difference between the life I expected and hoped for and the life that I have.

My landmark birthday also will coincide with me.leaving the profession that I have been in since leaving university. Twenty seven years of experience and I am leaving because staying is harmful to my well-being. It is a good thing but it’s also scary as I have no idea what to do instead and I have pretty much chosen the worst time in terms of the economy to leave a secure job for a career change with no concept of what to change to.

So, I have 140 days to find a way through this. 140 days to find a way to be OK in the evenings when my longing to not be alone and not to be left to my thoughts hurts.

140 days to grieve for the life that I worked hard to build but didn’t work out. To do that, I need to allow myself the anger that I have always pushed away about what happened.

And, on a practical note, 140 days to claim more space in my home so that I can phone friends for very needed conversations instead of limiting myself to texting.

The landmark maybe completely arbitrary but as my brain weasels have started using it as a source of energy to try to make me feel a failure, I am going to use it to energise my next steps in carving out the life that nurtures me.

It’s time to step forward from the just surviving zone that I have been in for too much of my life, and move into a zone that I truly inhabit and where I can live my life and thrive.

I hope that you’ll come with me. I’m doing this. I’m doing it for myself but I can’t do it on my own.