Cari-bein'

cycles

I've been thinking a lot the last few weeks about how much I've been through thus far in my life--about all of the times when I felt like giving up, or when something seemed or felt so insurmountable that any choice besides giving up seemed overwhelming. I've made it past, and through, many of those moments. And as a result, I'm sometimes shocked that I'm still standing--that I'm still here, almost in spite of myself.

Maybe my thinking has veered along these lines lately because of my looming birthday. It's a number that conjures up all kinds of fears and insecurities in women. But then suddenly the other day I remembered how I felt when I was about to turn 40. I actually looked forward to that birthday, an age that many dread. I felt that once I hit 40, things were going to get better. Or maybe it's just that at the time, it seemed like they possibly couldn't get any worse...ha! And my life did change drastically at 40. I got to know the boyfriend literally days after my 40th birthday. And here we are, a decade later.

Since my birthday is at the beginning of the year, I associate my chronological years with calendar years. A few months ago, I started to feel a glimmer of hope about 2005, but that little glimmer has brightened considerably lately. Now I'm beginning to think, and feel, that 2005 will be a year of big, big change for us. Obviously we already know what some of that change will look like. Yet there's much about our move plan that's still very undefined, still very hazy. But this feeling I have is about more than just a geographical relocation--it's about big internal change. I suspect it will be a year of big change for my mate, too, but I'm really talking about myself here.

It's as if there's been a circling back, a returning to where I started. And I mean that in the best possible sense. I'm not referring to a fall-back position or a regression or a detour in growth. Rather it feels like I'm getting back to who I really am...to who I really was. It's like that little book, "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten." Except my book would be called "All I Really Am I Was in Kindergarten."

So as I return to the town of Authentic, having traveled far and wide and taken many, many (many!) detours, I've begun to recognize the terrain. I'm beginning to spot familiar landmarks and signs. Certain items have begun reappearing in my physical surroundings after long absences. (Funny how things get buried for awhile only to reappear when the time is right.) My dreams have gotten even more vivid, and they're sometimes bursting with a kind of creativity that I don't exhibit, or even explore, in my waking life.

Yet for all of the positives I've tried to focus on, there are still substantial negatives. I avoid mirrors like the plague--it's simply too much of a shock to the system when I see 'that person' in the mirror. Who the hell is she? And what has she done with my real face? :) The other day I found myself making a mental laundry list of all of the things that are wrong with me physically, and it was a long-ass list! I suppose many women do that. The odd thing is that I'm not at all vain; I could almost use a good dose of vanity. I suppose it's a natural part of the female aging process to mourn the loss of physical youth. After all, it's the #1 way we're judged at first glance. The reason I mention it here at all is because it can be rather discombobulating to see some old gal in the mirror when emotionally I feel like I'm 'youthing.' It's an odd sensation: to be growing older externally while simultaneously growing younger internally.

So if you see some old broad playing in the sandbox, don't be surprised. It's just me.

posted by Marilyn @ 8:24 AM