Things are incredibly stressful right now and have been for several months. Right about the time I decided I wanted to have a blog and to really throw myself back into writing and creating, everything went a little sideways. There have been things going on with both of my kids, there has been one house issue after another. One requiring the yard to be dug up, another requiring us to get rid of a couch and try to find a new one. Right now we are sitting on ottomans in our very empty living room. All of the issues have required clean up and some level of stress. In September we all had covid, then a couple of weeks later the family had the worst colds they’ve had in years. I avoided that somehow. Now it’s the Christmas season and while I try to keep things as chill as possible to avoid the stress many people feel this time of year, it does require some level of effort and thought. Usually I enjoy putting in the effort and making things cozy, but this year it just feels like another thing on the to-do list. I feel time slipping by and all I feel is exhausted. I can barely make an effort to watch it pass, forget about trying to add some joy to the whole thing. I realized the other day that I have been feeling this way for almost a decade.
Ten years ago I started experiencing panic attacks and anxiety over small things. I have always been an anxious person, but ten years ago it got really bad. I told myself I could manage it. I could exercise and meditate and read books about it and make it go away. Instead I have spent ten years avoiding things that trigger my anxiety and existing in a very tiny life. The avoidance has become a habit and I don’t even think about ways I could enjoy my life anymore. I stay home most of the time and I stress over the few things I can’t avoid doing. I have become my grandmother who never learned to drive a car, suffered from undiagnosed social anxiety, and who lived her whole life as a friendless recluse, except for her family and an occasional bingo night.
When I realized that it had been an entire decade since the worst of this anxiety started, when I realized that it has just become my default setting, that I have just gotten used to it and accepted that I will never do certain things, I decided that I really need to do something about it. Isn’t a decade enough time? Isn’t ten years enough to sacrifice? What am I gaining from living like this? From the limits I have put around my own life?
I was seeing a therapist for awhile, but we didn’t really click and I didn’t feel comfortable being vulnerable with her. I am going to wait until the stress of our current house situation settles down and Christmas is over and then I am going to find another therapist. In the meantime, I have an appointment next week to talk to my doctor about some medication. With the way this anxiety affects me, my life, and my family on a daily basis, I think it’s long past time to treat it medically. I don’t want to live my grandmother’s life. I don’t want to shrink further away from experiences.
I turned 50 this year. Something that I haven’t wanted to freely admit to the world at large. I want to present myself as younger because 50 seems old and out of touch and irrelevant. What could I possibly have to contribute to the conversation as a perimenopausal, middle aged woman? Who will take me seriously? But that’s just a belief system, right? That’s just a thought that I have come to believe and seek confirmation for on a daily basis. I have tried to fill my Instagram feed with people like me. Middle aged, imperfect women and men who are still vital and contributing to the world. Still creating and living and inspiring. It challenges my belief that I might as well spend the rest of my life on the couch (if I had one) in front of the TV because the creative part of my life is over and it’s time to shut up and wait to die. I think this belief that women become invisible in midlife is put out there by the patriarchy to silence and control the very women who have gained the wisdom to challenge their systems of oppression.
I’m rambling now, but this morning I realized something else. I have been given an opportunity denied many. Denied people in my own family. I have been given the gift of 50. Two of my cousins died by suicide before they were 30. Another died in a car accident as a teenager. So many people are denied aging. How can I appreciate this gift? By living. By writing, creating, loving, feeling, speaking up, and supporting my fellow men and women doing the same. I have been allowed something denied to many and I want to appreciate the hell out of that. I want to stop overthinking my life and just live and write bad poetry and ramble on about whatever inspires the words on any given day.
I just want to live without so much fear. Let this be that new beginning.