Five years have passed since my last blog entry. To be honest, I had completely forgotten about this site. When I found it (thanks to Facebook 'memories'), I decided to surf through it to see what I was thinking about in my forties. Wow. I was obsessed with my looks and my fading youth. Yeah, I still am, but not nearly to the same degree. Above, there is me at 43; at almost 51; and now, at 56. I haven't had any cosmetic procedures, I almost never wear makeup anymore, and I've lost the near-constant obsession with looking young. At 56, you really need to surrender--you've lost that battle. Youth is overrated, anyway; the young people I know now are mostly miserable and lost. I wouldn't want to trade places with anyone I know in their 20s, 30s, or even 40s. I have fought hard the last several years to overcome multiple traumas, which was mostly what all the self absorption was all about. That, and after a global pandemic that has killed millions of people and left millions of others in precarious economic and health situations, I don't have a lot of energy to write about my aging face and body. I'm lucky I'm not dead or permanently disabled from the fucking virus.
I realize now that an overwhelming obsession with one's looks often happens because the messages you received growing up were largely about your appearance. I was always praised and loved because I was young and beautiful. I learned the same lesson over and over again: you are amazing and desirable not due to who you are, but to how you present yourself. I felt important and powerful because I hadn't lived long on the planet and I fit the culture's standard for hot. So, when you reach an age where youth is slipping away, there is panic and anxiety. Will I be loved as a middle-aged women? Will I be loved as an old woman? Will I be abandoned because I am no longer desirable, because I can't be the content of some man's fantasy? Will I lose jobs, friends, opportunities, my husband, when the face I present to the world has clearly been marked my time and experiences?
Menopause was no fun, but it blasted open all the fragile barriers that I had built to protect my true self. All the ways that I tried to protect myself from my past, my terrible emotional pain, and the realities that I did not wish to face head on, stopped working. Real estate obsessions, shopping sprees, Hollywood, even religion and spirituality had become tools of diversion and distraction. I did not want to look at what I had endured as a child and teen, and how those traumas fed into my frantic need to stay busy and fragmented as I pursued endless projects. Eventually, however, what you seek to avoid will find you. Suffice to say, when all that repressed material comes roaring to the surface, it's a shock to your brain and body. That dark night of the soul threatened to kill me. But it didn't. I'm still here.
Covid has created a weird limbo. I don't teach anywhere but through my laptop since March 2020. I mostly live in Idyllwild now, in an adorable cabin 10 minutes from town. We still have the Simi house, although Ty spends more time there than I do. My marriage has survived a lot of rough times. My kid is holding up, but I still wish I could make her life less stressful and painful. I have learned that we are very limited in that regard; if I try to save anyone from their path, the consequences are swift. It does not work to attempt to remove other's suffering. Suffering, I suppose, is the only path for growth for most of us.
Before Covid slammed into the scene, I lived in Granada for a few months in Fall 2019. I did not want to come back. I had found my happy place, my soul's home. But you can't simply declare that the life you spent so long building was no longer relevant. So I came home. Ty and I were planning our next trip for June 2020. That did not happen. Nor did it happen in July. September? Nope. So here we are, hoping that the Delta variant doesn't close down the world. If we can hang on to this fragile recovery, we will be back in Spain in September for a couple of months.
But I no longer expect anything outside of me to be a solution to existential despair. Pandemics bring a considerable amount of depression and anxiety, especially for those--like me--who were already dealing with those issues. There is no solution to pain but to feel it, no matter where you are, no matter how old you are, no matter how beautiful or successful you may appear to others. I have felt a great deal of pain since coming back from Spain and enduring multiple losses even before Covid sunk its claws into us all. I don't wish for these difficult feelings to disappear; I don't fight them anymore, or try to run away from them by filling my wrinkles with rooster gel. Now, what you see is what you get. I am honest with myself and others.
Yeah, I feel crappy pretty much every day, but there is also so much beauty around me and abundant love. I am comfortable with the fact that existence can be confusing, contradictory, and incomprehensible. I don't try to figure it all out anymore, or unravel the secrets of the Universe. She can keep her secrets. I try to focus on the small pleasures that make the days interesting--a great macaroon, a new lizard that pops up under the deck, the sound of the wind in the pines, the smell of the earth after a thunderstorm. The light here in Idyllwild is so gorgeous and mysterious at this time of the evening--summer is in full swing, and the crickets chirp at night, and the screech owls sit on our balcony making odd bird noises that I listen to at 3:00 AM when I can't sleep.
My unhappiness has been all about my ego. I thought I could find answers to unanswerable questions, and I got really pissed off and morose when my mind wasn't up to the task of figuring out reality. I fumed when my family didn't meet my expectations or respond to me the way I wanted them to. I freaked out when I realized that I am the only one responsible for my happiness, satisfaction, and growth in this life. I wanted something outside of me to make me happy: a Craftsman by the beach, friends who would sacrifice anything for me, family that could read my mind and love and support me exactly when I needed it, a church that was perfect and free from sin, a spiritual practice that would answer all my questions and enlighten me, etc. The list is endless. Point is, I have behaved like a true narcissist who thinks that everything and everyone should serve my needs. I'm still adjusting to the reality that this is all my job.
Yup, I am still most definitely a work in progress. I'm pissed that I'm going to be 60 in 3 1/2 years. But part of me doesn't give a shit about that anymore. I mean, if Dolly Parton can look crazy hot at 75 in a Playboy Bunny outfit, well, maybe age is more about perspective, just like everything else. I don't want to be an angry, resentful person who spends way too much time taking selfies to prop up a fragile ego. Nope, time for the frustrated child and the vain, insecure teenager to chill out and let the adult go enjoy her tacos at La Casita. So with that, I bid you all adieu, and if anyone is still out there, have a blessed evening. And summer.
