Birthday Musings
Today I turned the Big 5-0. I have no problems telling my age. I'm happy I made it is this far. ElsaF flew in to help me celebrate. We just got back from seeing How to Train Your Dragon (thumbs up). Now she's in the kitchen starting the celebratory feast: roast lamb, asparagus soup, carrots, salad, and for dessert, fruit compote with rice dream ice cream. I shall sip Riesling. So this gives me time to seriously blog and reflect.
Looking back, I've realized my outlook is much different from when I turned 40. Then I was still gripped in the throes of expectations I had for myself. I recall my 30's as The Therapy Years. Lots and lots of therapy in which I learned to stop blaming my dysfunctional childhood and take responsibilty for my own choices or non-choices, as the case may be. I'd let go a multitude of expectations of the way my life should progress on a daily basis but still clung to what I considered the big picture: I should be married, have children, working a high prestige job raking in the big money. I was supposed to have oodles of friends and living large. I didn't have a sense of who I was and used other people as benchmarks for whatever milestones I imagined I should have surpassed. I hated looking in the alumni magazine and reading that my classmates made partner at some big firm; were married and had two kids, a house and a dog; and ran a non-for-profit agency on the side. I hated my job and disliked most of my coworkers. I couldn't find a church and wondered why I couldn't be spiritually happy like my born-again cousin. I was convinced I didn't have alot of friends because there was something wrong with me. I recall my only big goal at the time: if I was married by the time I was 40, I would adopt. Truth be told, that was not because I was answering some biological/emotional imperative, but so that I might have somebody to care for me in old age.
No, my head wasn't in a good place.
Thankfully I had enough sense to realize I had no business foisting my issues on an innocent child and that I hardly had enough patience caring for a dog much less raising a reasonably sane functional human being. I also knew any relationship would be unhealthy as long as I made him responsible for my happiness. So I spent my 40's trying to show myself that I could what I thought I wanted with just a little more mettle. I started a bankruptcy practice on the side with a colleague with whom I never should have partnered. I took a temporary promotion to a managerial position where I liked the challenge but disliked how I was ordered to treat the rank and file, before I was done out of the job by internal politics. I moved to a new place but in the most non-proactive and stupid way possible. So after these "disasters" I emotionally bottomed out and spent over five years feeling angry, depressed and sorry for myself. I felt a failure because I hadn't met all the lofty expectations I'd set up.
Of course, the mental image wasn't true. Eventually, the march of time caught up to my skewed sense of reality. Those other people I used as benchmarks? A lot of them are divorced, their half grown kids are horror stories, they want out of their pressure cooker 60+ hour a week jobs (or lost them), and they are about to default on the mortgages for their suburban McMansions. They complained their friends were in the same boat. The people I envisioned as being so happy really were not.
What happened with me? Perseverence won out and I finally got a permanent promotion do an earlier position that didn't involve screwing other people. After swallowing my pride, I realized I actually don't like private practice. I'm well paid, work 40 hours, and can vacation whenever I want. I have two dogs and that's perfectly fine. I never really "wanted" children; it was all about societal pressure and a certain selfishness. I veer between being an atheist and a secular humanist and the world didn't end on this revelation. I have no more friends than before but they are all true, good ones with not a toxic one in the bunch. I actually function better with a few good friends than with a bunch of people because frankly being around too many people for too long is mentally exhausting. I fully understand everything I do or not do is my choice and nobody else's. I could start dating again if I chose, but I'd be perfectly fine living alone. He will have to be special for me to give up my independence. Aside from the usual human failings, there is really nothing seriously wrong me. Even my depression doesn't feel like the enemy any more. I'm healthy, trimming down and getting fit.
So funnily enough, all those expectations I put on myself really didn't reflect my true nature. As I sit here typing at age 50, I muse that I spent my 30's fixating on how bad things used to be and my 40's fixating on how good things still weren't. Hopefully I can concentrate on how things are, here and now, which is pretty damn good. I "am" living large, just not according to that damn script in my head. I'm impressed anew by my therapist's words: everything I do or don't, is a choice. So I choose not to dwell on all the things I did or didn't do fixating on what wasn't even true for me. If I hadn't gone through all that, I wouldn't understand myself better now. Not perfectly, but better.
They say life begins at 50. So that's what they meant.