A Starting Over at Sixty Blog
I haven’t written about my life changes in a long time. One word: Avoidance. It’s easier to reflect— an activity eased by time— than to react. Reflection holds wisdom. Reaction is raw. Unreasonable. Emotional. It can be stupid. Too much. Overwhelming.
I have spent most of my adult life learning not to react. Corporate success demands it. A male colleague interrupts me while I’m talking. Don’t react. Said male colleague gets credit for the idea I was espousing when he interrupted me. Don’t react. I’m dropped from meeting invites. Don’t react. The entire corporate world seeks frozen-faced robots following scripts no self-respecting human would ever quote. But I did because… Don’t react. (Then one day, I reacted, a story for another day.)
After leaving the imprisoned atmosphere of corporate America, I’ve worked on shedding the inauthentic layers of success. I value emotional self- management. But the sucked-in, held breath of pain from countless insults and slights… these I release like Mylar balloons into the stratosphere. They slip from my fingers one-by-one, and I watch them rise, small aerial grief containers disappearing into the thinning blue. At what moment do they burst, their poisonous residue exploding among the atmosphere’s noble gases?
I realized lately how long healing takes. Of course, I knew healing from trauma and upset takes years. I’ve worked for years on such healing. I underestimated, however, the layers. By layers, I mean this: the surface-level awareness followed by tissue absorption, followed by microscopic organ damage, followed by circulatory pain embodied in the blood and followed by synaptic-level misalignment. In other words, pain is more than emotion. It burrows into the body’s systems at every level. The last two years of major life change— I’ve engaged in unraveling the layers. Just when I think I’ve completed the effort, more unveil. One day I am giddy and free; the next, sorrow tugs my throat and lungs.
Being in a transitory phase in all areas of life doesn’t help with solid healing ground. Here are a few changes I’m navigating.
Our land, upon which we had planned to build, has not been cleared. The city would not approve our multi-family plan. We are now looking at other options. My growing knowledge of regulations and covenants has convinced me that today’s regulations have played a role in nuclear family breakdown. Most properties demand houses of certain sizes with single kitchens (only one stove and oven). Apparently, permitting a second kitchen for in-law, sibling or adult child use affronts today’s land use provisions, even on enormous land tracts. So where I’ll root again? I don’t know.
I’m also in transition with my book. It’s finished, for the most part. Some cleaning up of citations and line editing remains. This is in progress but the book won’t be printed until the fall, with release late in the year. Right now we are in my least favorite phase: marketing. My publisher likes to beta test with pre-sales, basically having interested readers reserve a signed book copy long before it comes out. They also encourage writers to monetize their efforts through seminars or talks, an activity I’d like to do but am terrified of doing. So here we are, pregnant but far from labor. This is going slowly, my angst growing day by day.
My daughters too are continuing to find their way into adulthood. One has enrolled in university again, I hope for completion. The other is regaining confidence, taking microsteps toward sufficiency. But both are still tentative in their progress. Both have significant challenges ahead of them. Both have yet to fully determine how to function successfully in a neurotypical world. Will they get to adulthood? I hope. I pray incessantly to a god I no longer believe in, though I’ve shifted the gender and definition.
I’ve started another book too, an autobiography building from this blog’s early entries and more recent events I have not shared. I also have begun to think about a third book, a possible historical novel about my grandmother coming to America from Greece. As much as I’d love to make her part of my autobiography, I’ve found too many gaps in the factual details of the time period. I don’t know, for example, which boat she took from Greece’s eastern ports to Ellis Island, though I can estimate based on times the ships were used to transport Greeks fleeing the Greco-Turkey war to safer shores.
Our political environment isn’t worth discussing. Most of us are keenly present to the wack-a-doodle hell of the current administration and the messianic chaos it has wrought. Talk about limbo. We are dangling in the ether of uncertainty. This destabilizes and, well, sucks. I don’t underestimate the grief for lost country many of us feel.
Even my body feels unsettled. I’m continually sore from teaching and taking Jazzercise— my only not-in-transition activity— and more tired than I should be. My body seeks immobility and silence. Hear nothing. Say nothing. Do nothing. Maybe even be nothing, for then I can float inside myself while life insists on pushing forward. The increasing sun strength helps. I love the warmth as I sit outside on my sister’s deck and try to work. Sometimes, my sole goal is vitamin D absorption.
With all this uncertainty, what is there to write about other than: changes, changes, changes. Exhaustion. Exhaustion. Exhaustion. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sun. Sun. Sun. I have avoided writing about myself because I am the least interesting part of my own life. So, yes, I’m starting over at 60. But I’m in the sticky mud flats of transition. Not much to see over here! Just a grumpy, aging woman with dark circles and droopy skin up to her wiggly thighs in the muck of life. It will be awhile before starting over becomes new me. So mind the gap while I work on it all.
I would love to hear from you, even if, especially if, you disagree. Perhaps we can bring back the American tradition of debate. Please like and share this blog with others. Subscribe to receive it by email and go directly to the Walk the Moon website (www.walk-the-moon.com) to peruse the full collection of articles and updates. You can email me from the Walk the Moon website as well.
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