It’s a ball ache isn’t it.
The whole growing older thing. Whilst firmly convincing myself daily that I’m merely half way through the game of life at 47, the realisation that shit is starting to deteriorate, rings true most days.
I’ve found the mid forties possibly one of the hardest decades to navigate. Not necessarily hard as in bad, but more like a steep hill where the view from the top is tremendous and therefore worth the stagger.
As I have aged, so has my family, and my circle of women, its changed, its matured, its different.
Gone is the comfort zone of school runs and friendship groups.
Gone is the sweetness of part time working round the kids.
It’s replaced by a thundering stampede to build my career, to put enough away to spend my last few decades travelling the globe and whereas when the babies were little I nurtured coffee mornings at stay and play. Now I try and manage multiple businesses in an attempt to grow and leave a legacy.
Chuck the peri menopause into the mix, the financial needs of two kids at University and a 3rd warming up for the same path and I sail perilously close to burnout like a moth cultivating the candles flame.
Because, not only is my list compromising of…
1. Earn enough to retire
2. Nuture the kids so they don’t ignore me in my dotage.
3. Eat all the vitamins daily to stave off whatever comes next.
4. Contact my friends enough with apologies for being rubbish.
5. Pay all the bills
6. Walk the dogs enough so they don’t destroy the house.
In my mid forties I get to do all of this with the familiar emotions of a teenage girl and the internal heating system of an Atomic bomb.
(Oh and the eyesight of a badger.)
Some days I convince myself I’m not menopausal, other days I spend hours looking for my phone whilst texting the kids asking where it is….
Other days I think I am literally nailing life, I have done the exercise thing, walked the dogs, answered emails, done the work thing, arranged a meet with friends. Then the sun shines in the mirror and I realise I have done it all with a 5 o’clock shadow as I missed my threading appointment the week before.
Life is an ironic mistress….
When I was a young slip of the girl, I used to look at the “grown-ups” around me and think they all had it figured out. Yet, I suspect it was the naivety of youth that allowed me to gloss over the charade they presented.
I am not sure there is an age where we figure it out.
Or get it together..
But every day we wake up, we get a chance to have another crack, to make choices, to find a way of being happy. Although my fortieth decade has felt complex, I also learnt the truth these last few years that I control the narrative, nothing outside myself can cause me trouble. I simply need to find the sunshine.
Even when my neck hairs are protruding, the work load is overwhelming, and my emotions erratic, I can find a calm and live by the theory it has gone ok up until now, so I suspect that will always be true.
Its reassuring finding a bit of calm amongst the madness of day to day life.
(However – I simply must rebook that threading appointment before Bigfoot mistakes me for his mum!)