Funny to think, when I started this blog, my overall goal was to provide commentary from the viewpoint of an American woman in the middle of her life ("The Middle," get it?). And though it's not entirely accurate to say fifty years of age is the actual middle (That bastion of all human knowledge, Wikipedia lists WHO stats claiming US women live to an average age of 81-82 years), it is commonly regarded as a sort of midpoint "hump"in our lives, even though most of us probably won't be kicking around this mortal sphere as long as ol' George here:
I was born fifty years ago this past Friday, and in between sips of wine and nibbles of chocolate cake, I've recently taken a bit of time to reflect on what that means. More specifically, what have I learned in my five decades here on Earth?
I recently read a HuffPo article written by a woman who'd just turned forty, and she offered up this gem, "If you are wondering whether she's his daughter or his girlfriend, she's his girlfriend." I figure I have at least a few Life Lessons in my back pocket that rival this in veracity if not wit.
To wit:
-- Life's not fair. -- When I was little, I thought this meant that sometimes my sister would get a slightly larger piece of pie than I did. Now I know it means that my professional mentor died of cancer when he was only 59 years old. And sometimes very bad people get away with very bad things.
-- There is joy and beauty in the smallest of moments. -- I was reminded of this on a recent scuba trip, where all the divers were waxing poetic on the beauty of these (sometimes) tiny mollusks called "nudibranchs." On the very next dive, I saw a tiny piece of brightly colored … something, on the reef. I thought it was trash, but when I swam closer, I saw this little one-inch orange & black & blue critter slithering over the coral. So while everyone else was watching the turtles, I couldn't take my eyes off this teensy beautiful spectacle.
I try to focus on at least one tiny thing, at least once, each day: how good my dogs' fur smells, the softness of worn flannel sheets, the quality of mid-day winter light streaming into my cozy home. That chocolate exists. And I am grateful.
-- The only way to lose weight is to expend more calories than you consume. -- Paleo, Atkins, South Beach, … If they help you pay attention to what you eat and maybe eat more healthfully, then go for it. If you think they hold the miracle cure that's going to make you not want that piece of chocolate cake, you'll be disappointed. And three years from now, the new fad diet will be something else entirely, probably 180-degrees from what your current fad diet recommends you eat.
-- You are who you are. -- A fascinating movie series, "Seven Up!," follows a group of children every seven years through their lives as they grow up. And it's pretty clear the kids who were serious as kids, are the serious adults; ditto, the pranksters. You can become more or less who you are, but at the very core, little changes.
-- "Move your muscles." -- This one's thanks to my mom. She always said, if I was bothered, the best thing was to "move your muscles": go ride my bike, run around for a while. And she's right. More than anything else I've ever found for dark mental times, exercise has worked most often with most consistently positive results.
-- No matter how well you treat it, your body will betray you. -- This, I think, is the dirty secret that no one tells you. Or maybe the old people tell the young, but they just laugh it off. It's true, though. The body ages. So one day you're suddenly running a ten-minute mile when you used to be faster. Your eyes don't see as well at night. Or while reading. Or you wake up one morning and your back hurts. And you have no idea why. The body wears out. It just does.
-- But it will also continue to do some very remarkable things. --Just last week I did a cartwheel. And a handstand. And a handspring. And in yoga class, I can still (almost) always do a passable Crow.
Sometimes even the fancy version:
And there is always a part of me thinking, "Holy crap! I can't believe I'm doing this!" Not to mention my heart that keeps on beating every single day.
-- Love has many faces. -- I used to think Love just looked like this:
Now I know it looks like this:
or this:
It's everywhere, but it may be in disguise. Be vigilant so you don't miss it.
-- You can make a difference. -- I am frequently disappointed in my inability to affect change in our government. It seems like even voting for all the candidates that I think have the strongest morals, we're still involved in wars I neither support nor understand. I suspect it will always be this way. But in my very own neighborhood, I can organize a benefit for a local women's shelter. Or pick up trash in the park at the end of the street. Or stop to help a couple of lost hikers in the woods (of Hawaii rather than Alaska, but still, it's my "neighborhood" as long as I'm in it, right?).
-- Time is fleeting. (Corollary: This is not a dress rehearsal.) -- It really does seem like I was just turning thirty. Or that I just started the job at the clinic where I've now worked for twelve years. And how can my friend's daughter already be seven? So fast -- it goes by so fast. And then it's gone. There are no do-overs. This is it. Live your life, cuz it's the only one you get.
-- But Time heals. -- My father (and probably some wise guy before him) always said, This too shall pass. Many times in my life, I've been laid low by pain and tragedy. Most recently, I truly did think my divorce would kill me. But here I am, a mere six months later, still alive. -- Still wounded, but healing. A lot of work has gone into that healing, but so has the soothing salve of one minute simply passing into the next, one day, one month, … There are scars, but less active pain. With time.
-- Have compassion. -- The driver who just cut you off in traffic? The woman who's mumbling to herself in the checkout line? You don't know their stories. They may have someone dying at home. Or they might just be a jerk. But wouldn't you rather give them the benefit of the doubt? What does it cost you, really?
-- Find your higher power -- it can heal you. -- I'm an atheist, so it took me a long time to come around to the idea of "higher power." Truthfully, I'm still not comfortable with the term, but I can't think of anything better. For me, the thing that is bigger than I am is the universe itself. The waves continue to wash up on the shore. The earth keeps spinning. The trees keep blowing in the breeze. … All whether I'm here or not. And that gives me tremendous peace of mind, takes the pressure off, so to speak. I can do my part, but I don't have to figure it all out. The earth nurtures me, it supports my weight every time I set my hiking boot or running shoe or winter mukluk on its surface. We're so small on this planet -- give in to the idea there's something bigger than you out there. It's OK to be small.
-- Nothing is forever. -- Good or bad. Paradise or tragedy. Maybe the end will have something to do with you, maybe it won't. And maybe you're happy about this and maybe you aren't. But it's true in either case.
-- Be bold. -- I never regret what I do so much as what I don't do. Or have been afraid to attempt. Prudent judgment aside, I can't think of a trip I've taken that I've been sorry about. Or an exotic food I've sampled. Or a chance on love. Live large.
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Those are the big ones. I hope to learn as many lessons (though perhaps less painfully??) in my next half-century. And by the time I hit 101, I will be very wise indeed!
And if all of this sounds like too much BS, then just keep this in mind:
When I was young, this was what I thought Home was supposed to look like:
Several kids I knew in school seemed to have this sort of Home. A mom & dad who loved each other. Family outings together. Visiting grandparents. Maybe even a family dog.
Of course, growing up in an alcoholic family, my Home bore only a passing resemblance to the idealistic version. The house looked the same, but the family dynamic it contained was quite different.
So when I met my husband and his smiling happy family, I thought I'd hit the lottery. A happy family. Who love each other. No one's been in jail. None of them have had shock treatment for schizophrenia. Nope, no suicides, not even in the extended family!
Then, after sixteen years together, my husband announced he didn't want to be married to me anymore. Just like that. It was done. All the talk about growing old together. An imagined life fading into the sunset? Poof.
Of course, there have been a lot of adjustments along the way, but the current struggle is to redefine what Home means now.
It's possible that old definition still exists for other people. I see it around me every day. True love. Commitment. Promises made and kept.
But I've just been given at least one example the concept is fallible. And, having suffered the devastation that revelation carried in its wake, one example is quite enough, thank you. Is love and companionship still a possibility in my future? Of course. But I can never un-know that promises made -- important promises -- can be broken. More than broken… shattered.
And so I look around at the world, and I find myself awed and inspired by the ways in which we humans have learned to redefine the concepts of Home and Family. Unlike the families of fifty years ago, a Family is no longer just blood relatives. Or marriage. Our Families these days are the people we choose to surround ourselves with, those who love and support us, and give us strength, as we do the same for them.
Not to say Family can't also contain conventional concepts like Husband or Wife, and Son or Daughter. But it could instead (or additionally) be a Life Partner (no marriage needed), or Close Friends to share a glass of wine and good conversation and laughter. Many of us, it seems, have through choice or consequence discovered that living alone -- that is to say, without continuous human partnership -- is the most preferable option. But that's not to say our Home is any less loving or fulfilled than it used to feel to me as I would turn my key in the front door, anticipating the embrace of my husband.
Nevertheless, while I know this alternative concept of Home is possible, and maybe even desirable, it's still a shift in thinking. And, for me, it's not one that comes easily. I don't know if it's because of cultural bias and its definition of Home, or that old reptilian brain and its biological imperative, or just because I, personally, truly enjoy a Life shared, a partnership, and so do feel acutely its loss and absence.
But I also realize flexible thinking is another of mankind's greatest gifts. And if one remembers the old adage:
… then Home can be anything I love, with my true heart. And for now, I am ever so grateful to have good books, and good friends, and dry firewood, and a full wine closet, and fuzzy slippers, and "gently worn" flannel sheets, and the quilt my mother and I made together some forty years ago. And these guys:
So, for now, this is my Home. And I could do worse.
In spite of recent life events (divorce), I've lived a pretty fortunate life. I'm mostly healthy (teeth, vision and respiration, notwithstanding), I have a good job, some pretty fabulous dogs. I live in a cozy home with cozy fireplace and cozy new slippers.
But I know Life isn't always so easy. And there are many of us out there who deal with the horrors of addiction.
The most common addictions that spring to mind are typically drugs and alcohol. But of course, one can be addicted to almost anything: shopping, gambling, sex, video games, pornography,… The list goes on forever.
Webster defines "addiction" as follows:
1: the quality or state of being addicted <addiction to reading>
(Well, that's a cop-out. Every English teacher I've ever had said you aren't supposed to use a form of the word in its own definition. So:)
2: compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance (as heroin, nicotine, or alcohol) characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal; broadly : persistent compulsive use of a substance known by the user to be harmful.
Now, then. That's more like it. -- Tolerance, withdrawal, compulsive, harmful … yes, much juicier.
While in college, I wrote a paper about drug tolerance and addiction, and the overwhelming message I retain from that bit of research (one of the few project whose details I actually remember) is that increasing quantities of drug increases the number of receptors for that stimulus, but decreasing quantities does not decrease the number. Like adipose fat cells, the deck is stacked in favor of human ruin. And so when you quit your addiction, all those starving neglected cells have nothing better to do all day than screech and wail and carry on as they wither in their emptiness. This leads, as any addict will tell you, to some very crazy thoughts, not the least of which are the ever-so-seductive voices whispering in your ear how very much better you would feel if you would just … Give In.
That's it! That's all! You're miserable? I know how to make it stop! Just one little drink. Or pill. Or one more pair of shoes…. Come on, who's it really hurting? -- But of course, the voices lie. Who it hurts is you. Every time. But you still. Can't. Stop.
Having lived on this planet for nearly fifty years, I, of course, have known some addicts. My father was an alcoholic. So was my brother. Another brother did drugs. Various friends in and after college (probably high school, too, though I never noticed) struggled with their own particular monkeys, some more successfully than others.
I, however, seemed fortunate to be lacking the addict gene. I can drink one or two glasses of wine (or none at all for weeks at a time) with nothing more than a temporary high or low. Cigarettes held no appeal past the "cool" factor during high school. Stronger drugs seemed a long walk off a short pier, so those I avoided altogether. I confess I have always been fond of the male of our species but, I think, not overly so.
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| I mean, really, ... |
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| … Can you blame me? |
If you've read any of my previous posts about this summer's divorce, you already know I've had a lot of new experiences, most of them wholly unwelcome. Evidently, lurking among them was addiction.
As they say in AA: "Hello, my name is Samuel. And I am an addict."
(Chorus: "Hello, Samuel.")
I didn't even realize my addiction was an addiction. It didn't keep me from going to work. Or feeding myself. Or living a mostly normal life. But it made -- makes … Once an addict, always an addict -- It makes me miserable.
You see, my addiction is compulsion, or obsession/compulsion, or OCD. (As Willy S. says, A rose by any other name… you know.)
And before you get too far down the path, let me tell you that I don't wash my hands a hundred times a day (only about fifty -- I am a doctor, after all) or triple check the oven before I go to bed, or have to count my steps from the front door to the mailbox every time I walk the path. No, my compulsion is cyberstalking my ex.
What?!?, you say! EVERYONE does that! It's totally natural! Of COURSE you want to know what your Ex-husband is doing with the girl he left you for, or just, you know, what he's doing in general! That's not an addiction!
But it is. And here are the reasons why:
1. I know it's wrong. -- It feels wrong. He left me. I have to accept that. He unfriended me (so did his girlfriend) on Facebook within about a week of him leaving. I know. I checked. -- So you know what I did? I created an alias. That's right, fifty years old and sporting the cyber equivalent of a fake ID. So I could snoop. When's the last time you had to create a false identity to do something that wasn't wrong? Exactly.
2. I mostly feel compelled to stalk him in the middle of the night. -- One of the self-help books I read recommends, during a breakup, not doing anything that occurs to you between the hours of midnight and 6a.m. This, as it turns out, is a really good rule. And one I have not always followed. I won't tell you how many times I have re-downloaded Instagram, then peeked, then (usually crying) deleted it again. Lots, is the answer. Lots of times.
3. It's deceitful, mostly to myself. -- I feel like I'm doing well, making real progress, feeling strong. I haven't seen or spoken to my Ex since the divorce hearing, about four months ago now. No Contact! Another rule of a successful break-up. Hooray, me! -- Except, it's not No Contact if I'm secretly spying on his life, is it?
But the way I truly recognize this as an addiction is the way I feel in those first few seconds after downloading Instragram for the umpteenth time, as his photos are loading onto my phone. It's pure addict exhilaration. I feel every little withering starving brain cell that has my Ex's name tattooed in a heart on its chest swell with joy and pleasure at the influx of the teensiest bit of Ex-related data, just like a dried-up old sponge swells with water after prolonged drought. If my head were in a CT scan, the whole area would light up like fireworks, probably in the shape of a heart. After the initial rush, however, there is only the downward spiral of pain, desolation, rejection. Withdrawal.
You see, I was addicted. I was addicted to my husband, to my marriage, to the promises of a long life lived together, sharing our pasts & futures. The safety and intimacy, the camaraderie and easy companionship that only decades together can bring. The private jokes.
But those things were taken from me, abruptly and without warning. Cold turkey it is, then. So I have staggered my way over to the long line at the methadone clinic and, being out of methadone, they offered me cyber-stalking instead. It's not the same high as feeling loved and cherished by your life partner, but it beats the big empty of nothing at all.
But eventually you have to kick the methadone, too. So here I am today, having for maybe the first time met and defeated a pretty big challenge to my resolve. You see, the New Girl's divorce hearing was today. So I knew where they would be, my Ex and the New Girl. This was my chance to see them together (which I've been fortunate to avoid thus far, but not forever, I'm sure). The tricksy part of my brain tried to run an end-run around logic to convince myself this way I could see them under controlled circumstances, instead of by accident in the grocery store. But I know my mind plays tricks on me. It's too clever by half. So, after hours of struggling, of walking on that ledge, I did not go to the courthouse.
I'd love to say I did it all on my own, but I had the serendipity of this week's therapy appointment having already been scheduled just before I would've committed said embarrassing act of stalking, and of course my therapist did his best to help me talk myself out of it. Then I bought and consumed a lot of sugar, which I also love but try to limit -- not today. Then, at the last moment, as I was sitting in car, the pendulum swinging in the wrong direction, one of my favorite songs came on the radio. And whenever I hear that song, even if I'm in my own driveway, I will back out and drive around the block until the song is over. So I turned it up -- WAY too loud -- and sang along -- WAY too loud -- and drove. Away from the courthouse. And toward my own life.
And these guys were waiting for me at home. As addictions go, they're pretty harmless. But the likelihood of complete recovery from addiction to their love is mighty slim:
