Mid-Life Crisis, Much?

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. ~Dylan Thomas

If aging is hard for the average person, imagine how hard it is for someone who has no current social circle, no family, no children, who works at home, is an HSP, an atheist, and a single lesbian. 

The greatest of these challenges is, for me, being without a partner. I am not suited to singlehood. I hate everything about it. I need someone to cook dinner for when she comes home each day; I need someone to nurture, talk to, explore with, bond with, hold hands with, cuddle with, to sexually please and be pleased by.  I need to go to sleep next to that woman each night and wake up with her every morning. I need the security and comfort a life partner provides. As I get older, that's even more important, and its absence even more stark.

One could say that being single at this age is just as difficult no matter what your orientation. But I would beg to differ. When you're dealing with finding a mate amid a small percentage of the population, on top of all the usual fears of getting older and facing your own mortality and all that entails, along with being a minority in so many ways, the challenge is a formidable one.

Those of us without a big circle of friends, or a family, are even more likely to be depressed and frightened all the time. Friends in the same age group or only a few years older start losing their grandparents, and parents, and they themselves begin developing health issues, having surgeries and other scares, and you begin to see that trajectory, that you are in that same boat and wonder what it is that might cripple you, devastate you, take you down. You realize you are closer to your death than to your birth and your life isn't exactly as you'd planned it to be. Is it enough? Did I succeed in building a life worth living?

About two years ago, I began to notice things about my body...skin changes, mostly. I would look in the mirror and see that my baby-face now had some wrinkles forming below my eyes, and my cheeks seemed to be sort of dripping slowly toward my jawline. I looked down at my hands and thought These are not my hands. These are my mother's hands. And what's that? An age-spot? I have a fucking age spot now? It did not compute. It made me feel ugly and old and despondent.

When I hear of someone entering their 50's and saying these are the best years to come, or 50 is the new 40, I feel they are speaking a foreign language. I am facing the big 5-0 and it has nothing to do with Hawaii. In only 5 months, I will be dragged kicking and screaming into that awful room, my fingers clawing at the door jamb to stop the suction. I can't wrap my head around turning 50. It makes no sense to me, it simply can't be accurate. I don't feel like I'm about to enter that decade of life. I have an overwhelming desire to lie to everyone about my age, because I feel the number is misleading. I'm not that old. I'm not. Each day now is to me a stark reminder of the hideous inevitability of all things dreadful. It's a train I'm riding in at high speed and I can't see the scenery anymore because it's moving by too fast; a train locked onto tracks arrow-straight and unforgiving, stopping only to board more dark passengers--fear, loneliness, pain, illness. sadness, and death.

Just recently I watched as a friend of a friend was suddenly stricken by an aneurism and did not wake from her coma in the three weeks before she died. She was only  6 years older than me. Now, I could say her health status and lifestyle predisposed her to it, but then again, how do you ever really know that there is some weak blood vessel wall somewhere in your body, and its cause? You can do everything in your power to eat right, exercise and take the right supplements, and meditate and avoid stress, as I do, but ultimately, you still don't know if it will matter. Maybe there's just a fate with your name on it. Never mind the accidental or simply unfortunate methods of your demise. You could get hit by a bus or a bullet. Or a building could fall on your head.

The scary part is, health or accidental events like those I mentioned will always happen suddenly and there is little we can do to provide ourselves an early warning system. It's like a vicious mugger waiting around some impending corner and no matter what route we take that mugger will know where we are and will be there, primed to take something precious from our pockets, our minds, our hearts or our bodies. Or I'm reminded of those scenes in movies and shows like The Tudors where innocent people are dragged toward the gallows to be hanged or beheaded and there is no escape, no last minute pardon from the King--and notably, no merciful God who saves his devout follower from an unjust death. There is nothing they can do about it other than choose the level of dignity with which they face their demise. And where does one find that dignity? That quiet acceptance? I am not one to ever go gentle into that good night. Someone has already tried to kill me and I didn't die. Because to me that darkness is repugnant. It represents the tragedy and cruelty of limited time. There will never be enough time in my single lifespan to do and see and feel and explore and create and savor all that I wish to. 

One of the greatest tragedies in life is the swiftness and certainty of death, and moreover, when you finally reach a level of wisdom and understanding that would allow you to do your best work, offer your best advise, experience your greatest love, your most harmonious and satisfying relationships--just when you finally evolve to that level of maturity--your clock ticks down to nothing and you don't get to enjoy the fruits of your labor. 

 

It really pisses me off. 

Bring me the magic elixir of life-extension, and I will drink it.

Twice.

Mid-Life Crisis, Much?

Mother-Guilt Archetype & Family Obligations

Most of us are familiar with the Mother Archetypes in our society--one of which is the passive-aggressive mother who tries to make you feel guilty for living your own life because it doesn't coincide with what she wants or needs. As exemplified by messages like "I had to go to the doctor yesterday...in case you care..."

A friend of mine is dealing with this sort of mother, who has a long track record of showing little or no concern for her daughter's happiness, nor at all appreciative of her daughter's wonderful qualities. Her only contribution to the mother-daughter relationship is criticizing, dismissing, minimizing her daughter's feelings, wishes or challenges. 

Recently my friend was victimized by her mother's guilt trips about not "coming home" enough (out of state), and that it was somehow a mistake to move so far away from family. The point that seems to be missed by overbearing, passive aggressive, self-absorbed mothers like this, is that if your daughter feels like she has to move to ANOTHER STATE to get away from you and be happy, there's an issue that isn't about your daughter's poor choices.

This friend of mine is currently worried about her grandmother's health, and that she might not be around much longer. And she's anticipating the issue of her grandmother dying, and then knowing she simply cannot afford the trip back to her family's state. She had just made one recently to deal with other dramas in the family and can't do it again anytime soon. She'd probably have to take a week off from work again, like she did when her grandfather died, and she can't ask for more time off for awhile without endangering her job and her financial status. She was already making up the time she missed to go home recently, by working late almost every day. So she anticipates the guilt-trips and emotional blackmail that will certainly follow, should her grandmother pass away anytime soon. 

I could see that the situation could use some reframing.

So I told my friend that we now live in a different world than the generation of her mother. People are moving around more and the economy is in the toilet and everyone is struggling. The point is, you can only do what you can do, and the guilt trips from her mother are about her mother's issues, not anything my friend is doing wrong.

I said that people nowadays miss things like funerals and weddings and hospital visits, because life is hard, finances are strained, and we're all generally scattered and not living near our parents and other relatives.

And the deeper issue here is that whether or not you believe in souls, it's about that person who died, and your relationship with them--not your relationship with everyone else. If they do have a soul and there is some higher existence after the death of the body, then they would not have petty human emotions anyway, would know you love them and wanted to be with them to say goodbye or honor them at a memorial or funeral if you could. And they would feel your love for them no matter where you were geographically. So the guilt-trip aspect puts limits on the limitless nature of something like that.

Contrarily, if you don't believe in the soul and any form of life after death, then it's that the person has died and is completely unaware of anything anyone does and so it's a moot point.

So the feelings of the other people about what you are and are not doing to honor a loved one who has died, is THEIR ISSUE and has little to do with who you are, or what you're responsible for. All in all her mother's arguments against my friend's decisions and her choice of where she calls home is about what her mother wants and needs and has nothing to do with what her daughter wants and needs, so ultimately, it's all about being selfish and not about being loving or supportive. Thus, it's her mother's issue and my friend doesn't have to get sucked into that void.

Mother-Guilt Archetype & Family Obligations

Father, no--Brother

I had been asleep only four hours when I woke up crying. A dream. I was at some kind of family gathering, a reunion, perhaps. I was stocking some refreshments, but I was being paid to work at this place.  (I haven't done that kind of work in 20 years). From my peripheral vision, i saw a man walk in, and something compelled me to take a good look at him. It was my father.  My dead father. No, it was my brother, who looked just like him, now. I hadn't seen my brother in something like 13 years. He had changed. He now looked like my father. I turned away swiftly, not wanting him to see me. Not wanting the emotional confrontation that would be inevitable. What was he doing here?  Tears began to stream down my face, and I continued to hide from my brother, hoping he wouldn't recognize me. Even though i wanted to pretend he was my father, and I would have the chance to say goodbye.

My family took that away from me when he died last January, and i found out 13 days after the fact, from (of all places) friends of friends on Facebook. To add insult to injury, they left me out of the obit too. I wrote about this in Surviving Family Member.  

Whatever it was that made my family hate me, is still a mystery. I spent half my adult life trying to win their approval and love, until I finally had to just give that up and get on with my life. Perhaps that's why I spent the last ten years trying to become the most quality person I could be. I needed to know for sure that there was no reason for them to have made me the pariah, the outcast, the black sheep. No reason other than their own selfishness and ignorance. And I'm sure it's why the thought of growing old without enough friends and a partner is so sad and frightening to me. If I don't have many friends and a partner who loves me sincerely, and chooses to be with me, it becomes pejorative commentary on my value as a human being.


So again, I take a deep breath, tell myself I matter, wipe the tears away, and make coffee.

Father, no--Brother

Surviving Family Member

My father is dead.
He's been dead for 13 days.
I got to hear about it from a friend who got a call from another friend who saw it in the paper, and I was not mentioned in the obit as a surviving family member. This is ironic because surviving my family is exactly what i had to do.

I'm pissed off that I'm crying. Why would I have tears for someone who threw me away like used coffee grounds, and with as little consideration?

I know I'm not crying for the loss of him. Or the loss of them. I'm crying for just the loss. The utterly selfish and heartless nature of their rejection. Where did this come from? Not from the chore of raising me, I don't imagine. I had never been a bad kid. I never drank, had sex, never got pregnant. Never did drugs. Never got arrested. What was my transgression worthy of their blatant disgust and dismissal? I suspect it was because I was gay. I might never know for sure. OF course, that wouldn't explain the way they treated me before even *I* knew i was gay. Maybe they just used that as a convenient excuse.

But when i had finally grown weary of trying to win their love i decided i would just stop contacting them and see what happened. I never heard from them again. Their silence was my answer.

So as far as I'm concerned, on January 7th, 2010, my entire family died.

Surviving Family Member

Lights! Camera! Grief.

Is it just me? Am I the only one who is chagrined by the way a tragedy is followed immediately by family members who go on Larry King and talk about how grief-stricken they are that they just lost a loved one?

This Buffalo Plane crash of Thursday/Friday. I find it completely offensive that those people are already being interviewed on news shows like Larry King, merely a day after it happened... Remember those disparaging comments about the "ambulance chasers" of yesteryear? This is worse. This is about people who ostensibly loved another person and lost that person tragically, who then, with great swiftness, appear on a national news or other program to talk about that deceased individual, and collect a fat payment on their way out. Can you say "Capitalizing on the death of a loved one?" I don't know about you, but If I had just lost someone I loved, the last thing I would do, or even be ABLE to do, is talk about it to a bunch of faceless strangers on television, and then get paid.

What is with all this death-whoring?

Has love and loss now been completely sold out to media and money?

Lights! Camera! Grief.

Brain Dump: Mortality & Meaning

Okay, I know this is going to be less a blog, and more a journal entry, but whatever. Consider it the first in a series of brain dumps.
<<--Look, i even made a graphic for it....

Onward.... I usually try to see the bright side of things, and when I can't do that, I try to see the funny side. Anyone who reads this blog knows that. And often the dark side can be funny, if you know how to manipulate the data.

But this morning, I think my brain is in some other gear....PARK, maybe. It hits me like this every so often when it gets triggered by news from loved ones, or dreams I have.

I dreamed I had my ex girlfriend's parrots. Like they were mine or I had inherited them or something. Maybe in the dream she had died...I don't know...(and no, i don't wish any ill toward any of my ex's. They all tend to merge after a while anyway...E Pluribus unum.*) But I was enjoying the parrots. I was always playing with the Cockatoo, named Sophee (that was her real name) but in the dream she wasn't crippled and her personality was more like Keegan's--the African Grey of the pair, who was talkative and personable. I was living in my father's house --have no idea why. A few days ago, I dreamed my father died, too...I'm sure all this came from finding out that another one of my ex girlfriends lost her mother. And once you hear that, there's this mortality bacteria in your brain...and it sort of infiltrates your life for a while, until you get back into the bliss of ignoring all those harsh realities.

When I woke from all this, I lay there with Shoes curled up with half her body on my shoulder, purring softly. (Yeah, my cat. Women don't seem to purr...well, okay, if I'm doing it right, they do.) For a long time I just laid there, and thought about things. Like you do when you're sleepy and just waking up and the brain starts to make that trip back to rational consciousness again.

I felt sad. Like why doesn't my ex, the one who lost her mother--why does she feel she can't be in my life somewhere? Why can't I be one of those friends to her that she seeks out during times like these, for support? Why does she continue to judge me by the person I was 10 years ago? And why does it still matter to me at all? Because she was the only woman I was ever so madly in love with? Because it was the only time I've ever had my heart ripped out of my chest and handed back to me as that person walks out of my life, while I hold my bloody thumping, dying heart in my own hands? Is that why?? (Okay, that was graphic, but that's what the emotion surrounding it is like for me).

And I thought of how sad it is that I am alone so much. Is it mostly my choice, or is it part and parcel of being an author-artist-songster- type person? Everything I do is something I do alone....And I stayed sad as my thoughts wandered to the two dreams of my father.

How tragic that I have a biological family who rejects me on the basis of who I am, (an oxymoron in and of itself) and that it somehow offends their sensibilities to the degree that they would abandon their own child; and I thought maybe it wasn't their sensibilities. Maybe they were all just selfish, shallow people, and I can still feel good about my decision to remove all toxic people from my life. Maybe it's a blessing that I might never know when any of them die.

And I thought of my own mortality. I coughed. I thought for the umpteenth time, that I should quit smoking. It was the last thing left on this "take good care of yourself" train. Addiction to cigarettes is so hard to conquer. I've stopped smoking a large number of times, (yeah, quitting is easy: I've done it a bunch of times) and it was okay for a while, but then I would need that---what? comfort? is smoking really like having a Friend? And I know it makes my brain feel better. It's like I can't think clearly without cigarettes. A crazy excuse from an addicted smoker?

And then I thought about all the weird things that happen to your body as you get older, and how it's a little frightening. The older I get, the more frightened I become. I lament the lost years--wishing I'd known 20 years ago, what I know now. Wishing I had more time. Wishing, as I've mentioned before, that I really could live forever. (Ironic, since there have been so many times that i wished to die). So many things on the horizon, other than a mushroom cloud (if we're lucky). Things I'd like to see and experience....but as each birthday comes and goes, I find myself lying about my age more and more...and I get this dread in my gut...knowing I won't grow old gracefully. That I'll be kicking and screaming the whole way. Never mind all those big personal cosmology questions that arise about death and life and life after death. Just dealing with your own declining vessel is enough to worry about....Like when you're driving a car that starts to have problems, and then there's a whole list of problems on its heels and you know at some point it won't be worth fixing and it should just be given over to the great junk heap. Is that my fate as well?

And will I face this progressing disintegration by myself, with no one to support me, care for me, love me? (I am so thankful for my best friend). Will I live out this timeline of mine without being able to give my heart to someone who deserves it? And why is it so hard for me to give my heart away? Why don't I fall in love easily? Why is it so rare for me to even be sparkin' on a woman? That's only happened a grand total of 2 times in....god...how many years? And the first spark was doused with water pretty quickly. Well, not water. Wine. The second one--I don't know about that. It's current. I have no idea what this woman feels toward me, and I'm too chicken to ask, so I'm focusing on the friendship, which is very important to me anyway.

But amid this, The same questions continue to arise. Will I never find my PERSON? Will I meet my ultimate demise without knowing what it feels like again to be so in love with woman that the thought of her not being there aches like a case of restless legs and angina, combined. After all I've done to evolve and become the type of person who would be considered a valuable discovery for some lovely, evolved, intelligent, and funny woman out there, will it not matter? Is fate just fate? How much control do we really have over how our lives go? And I wondered if maybe my high ideals and constant concern for the practice of sound ethics has gotten me here. Is it just subterfuge? Does it really matter if I'm a quality person? Finding love seems to have almost nothing to do with how great a person you are. Rude awakening, that. Maybe I'm having a mid-life crisis.

So today I must try to coax myself back over into my concerted efforts to ignore these things that simmer on the burner at the back of my mind.

R. D. Laing, a British psychiatrist noted for his alternative approach to the treatment of schizophrenia, once said, “Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.” I wish I didn't resonate with that quote quite so much.

--------------------------------
*Latin for "out of many, one."

Brain Dump: Mortality & Meaning