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arguchikfor some reason this morning i'm really missing my family, particularly my parents. i woke up already thinking about them.
then i thought about my ex-husband, one of the last conversations i had with him in person. he had called me and wanted to talk to me for a minute, and then he came to meet me in the lobby of my apartment building. i was dressed for a run--it was mid- to late-october and warm out so i was wearing shorts. i had lost about 10 lbs. since i had moved out of his house, and my running clothes showed it. he asked me if my shorts were new, and i said "no, i've just lost weight." as if he didn't believe me, he reached out and felt of the fabric--an intimate gesture, almost possessive, no longer appropriate, and i started to cry while pulling away. noone had touched me with anything more than a friendly intimacy in a couple of months. it was too much to bear, but he wouldn't let me pull away, he came closer and held me and i sobbed into his shoulder. it sounds melodramatic...but it wasn't, it was actually quite mundane. it lasted a couple of minutes, and then i calmed down and pulled away, and reminded him he had come to talk to me about something. i can't remember what it was now, something about the house probably--i would still own it with him until the divorce was final a few months later, so he had to consult with me before doing anything to it. i remember this because it was such a clear moment: clear to me that he was really not going to take me back, clear to me that too much had happened and i couldn't come back anyway, clear to me that this breakup was going to hurt and that it had already changed me irrevocably. physically, certainly--i had lost so much weight because i had completely lost my taste for meat, junk food, fast food, soda, and candy, literally overnight; and because i had morphed from a ~10 miles per week runner into a 25-30 mpw runner. i had also developed the habit of taking my dog for a 2-3 mile walk every evening (he also ran with me--though i would always drop him off at home after 5 or 6 miles, if i planned to go longer), and "epic walks" a couple of times per week. we walked all over burlington...and seattle, after we moved here. whenever i ran or walked, i imagined wearing out my rubber soles a fraction more, and learning to let go, to accept, to adjust and move on, to leave dust behind and open my arms and my mind and my heart to whatever and whoever came my way. i laughed at myself a lot, because i was full of cliches: "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger"; "you can do anything you want to do"; etc. i was living a cliche--30-something divorced white chick asking "why me" while running and finding her inner voice and shit. all of life...cliche after cliche, and yet...impossibly new, impossibly out of bounds, unpredictable, complex, endlessly fascinating.
the upheaval of that time is difficult to describe, to communicate. people meet me now and perceive me in various ways, and i am surprised by what they say, what they see when they look at me, and what they can't see. what they assume. this isn't all that new, of course; it's how the social works, to some extent. we read surfaces. it used to make me very angry, that people couldn't see the depth behind my surface, and i would angrily correct misperceptions. now i find it amusing, and i stay quiet, though still startled that my wounds and scars don't show.
lately i can feel myself solidifying into a new mental space. it's mostly good, with a little bit of sadness and worry at the fringes. frustration, that i've had to re-learn some of the valuable things i learned, back then. my last 2-3 years have been something like a refresher course, i guess, in loss, acceptance, moving on; only now that seems more like a pattern. loss, accept, move on, rinse, repeat. with each repetition a little more skin flakes off, though; the bruises don't quite fade all the way. loss, accept, move on, a little bit more slowly and cautiously than last time. try not to expect the next loss while also trying not to be surprised by it if--when?--it comes. read the terrain. try to navigate more smartly, less recklessly, yet somehow (impossibly?) still fearlessly. somehow avoiding the stiffness and outright refusal to move at all that marks the truly old, regardless of chronological age.
i'm going to turn 40 soon. culturally it looms large; personally too. i have gotten to know myself pretty well by this point, what i like and don't like; what i can and can't do; what i want and don't want to do; what really matters and doesn't matter to me in a romantic relationship or a friendship. i mainly feel the peace of self-acceptance, of accepting the changeability of the world and the impermanence of circumstances, and i understand in a way that i didn't, when i was 20 or 25 or even 30, how (and why!) to move myself in the world, the dangers of staying down too long when i fall, what it means to make decisions and to take responsibility for them, when and how to negotiate with other people and when to put my foot down. i understand the shape of my own spine, the spring of my feet, the give in my heart, the strenghths and frailties and vulnerabilities of my body and my "soul" (for lack of a better term). so it's mostly good. but i also feel a tinge of worry about what real age is going to be like--have i even begun to experience loss?--and a tinge of sadness about some of the people and things i've left behind--at the same time i can feel other people and things slipping away.
then i thought about my ex-husband, one of the last conversations i had with him in person. he had called me and wanted to talk to me for a minute, and then he came to meet me in the lobby of my apartment building. i was dressed for a run--it was mid- to late-october and warm out so i was wearing shorts. i had lost about 10 lbs. since i had moved out of his house, and my running clothes showed it. he asked me if my shorts were new, and i said "no, i've just lost weight." as if he didn't believe me, he reached out and felt of the fabric--an intimate gesture, almost possessive, no longer appropriate, and i started to cry while pulling away. noone had touched me with anything more than a friendly intimacy in a couple of months. it was too much to bear, but he wouldn't let me pull away, he came closer and held me and i sobbed into his shoulder. it sounds melodramatic...but it wasn't, it was actually quite mundane. it lasted a couple of minutes, and then i calmed down and pulled away, and reminded him he had come to talk to me about something. i can't remember what it was now, something about the house probably--i would still own it with him until the divorce was final a few months later, so he had to consult with me before doing anything to it. i remember this because it was such a clear moment: clear to me that he was really not going to take me back, clear to me that too much had happened and i couldn't come back anyway, clear to me that this breakup was going to hurt and that it had already changed me irrevocably. physically, certainly--i had lost so much weight because i had completely lost my taste for meat, junk food, fast food, soda, and candy, literally overnight; and because i had morphed from a ~10 miles per week runner into a 25-30 mpw runner. i had also developed the habit of taking my dog for a 2-3 mile walk every evening (he also ran with me--though i would always drop him off at home after 5 or 6 miles, if i planned to go longer), and "epic walks" a couple of times per week. we walked all over burlington...and seattle, after we moved here. whenever i ran or walked, i imagined wearing out my rubber soles a fraction more, and learning to let go, to accept, to adjust and move on, to leave dust behind and open my arms and my mind and my heart to whatever and whoever came my way. i laughed at myself a lot, because i was full of cliches: "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger"; "you can do anything you want to do"; etc. i was living a cliche--30-something divorced white chick asking "why me" while running and finding her inner voice and shit. all of life...cliche after cliche, and yet...impossibly new, impossibly out of bounds, unpredictable, complex, endlessly fascinating.
the upheaval of that time is difficult to describe, to communicate. people meet me now and perceive me in various ways, and i am surprised by what they say, what they see when they look at me, and what they can't see. what they assume. this isn't all that new, of course; it's how the social works, to some extent. we read surfaces. it used to make me very angry, that people couldn't see the depth behind my surface, and i would angrily correct misperceptions. now i find it amusing, and i stay quiet, though still startled that my wounds and scars don't show.
lately i can feel myself solidifying into a new mental space. it's mostly good, with a little bit of sadness and worry at the fringes. frustration, that i've had to re-learn some of the valuable things i learned, back then. my last 2-3 years have been something like a refresher course, i guess, in loss, acceptance, moving on; only now that seems more like a pattern. loss, accept, move on, rinse, repeat. with each repetition a little more skin flakes off, though; the bruises don't quite fade all the way. loss, accept, move on, a little bit more slowly and cautiously than last time. try not to expect the next loss while also trying not to be surprised by it if--when?--it comes. read the terrain. try to navigate more smartly, less recklessly, yet somehow (impossibly?) still fearlessly. somehow avoiding the stiffness and outright refusal to move at all that marks the truly old, regardless of chronological age.
i'm going to turn 40 soon. culturally it looms large; personally too. i have gotten to know myself pretty well by this point, what i like and don't like; what i can and can't do; what i want and don't want to do; what really matters and doesn't matter to me in a romantic relationship or a friendship. i mainly feel the peace of self-acceptance, of accepting the changeability of the world and the impermanence of circumstances, and i understand in a way that i didn't, when i was 20 or 25 or even 30, how (and why!) to move myself in the world, the dangers of staying down too long when i fall, what it means to make decisions and to take responsibility for them, when and how to negotiate with other people and when to put my foot down. i understand the shape of my own spine, the spring of my feet, the give in my heart, the strenghths and frailties and vulnerabilities of my body and my "soul" (for lack of a better term). so it's mostly good. but i also feel a tinge of worry about what real age is going to be like--have i even begun to experience loss?--and a tinge of sadness about some of the people and things i've left behind--at the same time i can feel other people and things slipping away.
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-04 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-04 10:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-04 08:30 pm (UTC)So, thank you so much for this insight. I'm honored to know you. :-)
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Date: 2006-12-04 10:54 pm (UTC)of course there's still other BS, but i expect at least some of that will slip away as time passes too. i think every age sees some BS shedding--particularly the ages we mark, of course.
honored to know you as well, ms. nightingale--and thanks, that's a lovely thing to say. btw, i listened to a couple of the WAV files on your website--that's quite a set of pipes you've got there! dyn-o-mite! :-O i was most impressed, and also most regretful that we didn't badger you and mosk into singing a duet in pittsburgh last summer. (or maybe someone did...if so, it wasn't while i was within earshot, alas.)
no subject
Date: 2006-12-05 06:10 am (UTC)Thank you for the insight into something so personal and close to your heart. I too am honoured to know you! I don't think 40 is when you start to experience loss- you are as old as you feel really...