Turned 50 this week. Got a cold the next day. I notice that after I hit any milestone I always get sick. Like the Universe is saying, "slow down, pay attention, this is important." I have been sick a lot this last year.
This is the first year of my life that my Mom and Dad have not been here for my birthday. I feel a sadness around this that penetrates my bones. It makes it hard to breathe. It is also freeing in a way that is both uncomfortable and delightful. It's very hard for me to explain. But I know that my life has changed forever and I now tread forward through the forrest of my life on a completely different path.
For my birthday this year I held my friends and employees and sister hostage and told them they had to come hear a reading of a play I wrote almost 20 years ago. I felt it was important for this current group of people to know that I could do more than run a video store. It was a nice experience, but it did not do what I thought it would do. It did not make me feel different. It did not bring me to a place where I felt I could launch out as a writer and begin to make life moves. All it did was remind me that I am who I have created and that person is slightly talented, slightly motivated, and slightly lazy. I want things handed to me, I want things easy, I want things now. I am just like most people. And I am not this great creative person that people (read:family) have said I am.
I wonder if this is the time in my life, this next 20 or 30 years, where I finally decide to be happy with my small life. I finally decide to accept that I am going to be alone. That I finally just breathe and let this path be my friend and just quit fighting? I am ready to quit fighting.
50 is a big number, and truth be told, there have been many times in my life when I really REALLY did not think I would make it this far. So there's that.
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