Category Archives: AGING

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God for Athiests

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Recently, I found myself pregnant at a pretty old age – 47 years old. It came as a complete surprise, and because of the situation I was in, it wasn’t a very easy time. I noticed immediately that my body was reacting to it completely differently than it had when I was much younger.  It was partly the age, I think, but partly because there was something not quite right. My doctor told me I had the fertility of a 25 year-old. But those eggs, they’re not young eggs. Either way, it was rough. The fetus died after the first month but my body didn’t figure it out for a whole other month.  I think I almost died miscarrying that baby, partly because I didn’t want to go to the hospital and partly because I didn’t want to let go of it. I wanted there to be a baby, you see.

Even still, a whole year later it’s hard to come to terms with it.  My body hasn’t fully adjusted yet and I still mourn what might have been. But one thing it did do was connect me quite dramatically with the shortness of life. I did the math – 47 + 20 = 67. That’s almost 70 by the time my kid would be 20. And from 70 to 80 and then…so short. So unbearably, horribly, unfathomably short. Would it have been worth it for the kid to know me for such a short time? Would it be easier to leave, harder? I didn’t know the answer to that – but I did know that suddenly life looked very differently to me.

And it still does.

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Because the Night, Because the Day

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Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
‘Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

In the days of the internet you have shadow versions of yourself floating around out there.  You aren’t just the one person. You are who you always wanted to be. You say everything you always wanted to say. You never have to be imprisoned by the confined misery of the hand you were dealt.

When two personas try to meet in real life, though, they have to reconfigure themselves into who they really are.  And it’s a roll of the dice whether or not those two people can get along or not. Sometimes they can live in deluded ecstasy together. As in, their individuals pretend selves become the collective pretend couple.

This kind of living has pretty much finished me.  I just want you, the internet, to know this.  After fifteen years online I’ve finally come to the conclusion that “warts and all” is the way to go in life.  Just get all messy and sloppy in it.  There is no benefit that lasts just being in it for the ego boost. We must be bigger and better than our egos.  Think about what an ego must look like, what it would like if it was actually manifested in human form. You know it would not be nearly as big, as hot, as cool, as all-powerful as it thinks it is.  No, it is cowering in the dark, afraid to do anything that might risk it losing at life.  The ego: it’s the little man behind the curtain and it offers you nothing back except a lifetime of unrealized expectations.

Except that ego drives us to do all sorts of things. I think that evil little sack of shit drives my own creativity sometimes, the doing of this bloggggggg, wanting to have a voice “out there.” I know it drives rock stars and movie stars.  But trust me, when it gets down to happiness – look elsewhere.

I finally went back to yoga after a long break.  What a relief that was.  In yoga you have to fight your ego at every turn.  You’re in the front row showing off or in the back hiding. You’re doing the advanced pose or the modified one.  But my ego drove me to the point where I injured my shoulder and couldn’t do it anymore. So not only am I in the 1/2 class and no longer in the 2/3 class but I slapped myself down and put myself in the back row.

I am trying to get life right.  I  make mistakes every day.  I wake up hating myself.  Then I wake up okay with it all.  What I do know is that there probably isn’t ever going to be a happy ending for anyone until they practice what the Buddha teaches.  Ahem.

• What is the First Noble Truth?

The first truth is that life is suffering i.e., life includes pain, getting old, disease, and ultimately death. We also endure psychological suffering like loneliness frustration, fear, embarrassment, disappointment and anger. This is an irrefutable fact that cannot be denied. It is realistic rather than pessimistic because pessimism is expecting things to be bad. lnstead, Buddhism explains how suffering can be avoided and how we can be truly happy.

• What is the Second Noble Truth?

The second truth is that suffering is caused by craving and aversion. We will suffer if we expect other people to conform to our expectation, if we want others to like us, if we do not get something we want, etc. In other words, getting what you want does not guarantee happiness. Rather than constantly struggling to get what you want, try to modify your wanting. Wanting deprives us of contentment and happiness. A lifetime of wanting and craving and especially the craving to continue to exist, creates a powerful energy which causes the individual to be born. So craving leads to physical suffering because it causes us to be reborn.

• What is the Third Noble Truth?

The third truth is that suffering can be overcome and happiness can be attained; that true happiness and contentment are possible. lf we give up useless craving and learn to live each day at a time (not dwelling in the past or the imagined future) then we can become happy and free. We then have more time and energy to help others. This is Nirvana.

Oh hi, Nirvana.  I’m looking for you.  Help me find you, will you?  I love this notion of the “imagined future.” This is a trap.  The old “when this happens, this other thing will happen.”

The fact is that life washes over us every day and we barely notice it.  The sun comes up and it goes back down. Light washes the landscape and then it goes dark. And every day our body keeps track of the time passing.  We feel things start to fade.  We age.  And that is all.  But if we can be right here, right now, well then maybe – just maybe – we will kiss the tip the nirvana occasionally.

I feel better now, internet.  Thanks for being here, my imagined self, my projected self, my real self and mean crumpled old ego thank you too.  Oh, memories.  Oh, sweetness.

Because it is Today of All Days

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There is nothing special about today. Except everything. As the days and nights pass, I am continually reminded of the swiftness of time, how it starts rolling and moves faster as it gathers mass. It moves faster but doesn’t get more dense – it gets lighter somehow. We don’t have any way of tracking our days so we let them slip by undetected. The doors are locked, the lights go out and we sleep. For me, sleep is always a daunting task. With no one to sleep with the bed is a lonely place and the hours in between night and morning can sometimes be trying. Will I wake up at three and start thinking about things? If I do that, will I ever get back to sleep? Where will my thoughts take me tonight? Panic of all the things I have yet to do? Panic that my life has come to nothing? Panic that I am alone in this bed? Panic that I still haven’t even accomplished half of what I set out to accomplish? I feel lucky that my thoughts have yet to lead me over to the next room, where my daughter sleeps. She has yet to give me much cause for worry. And I know I’ve been there as best I could. Where she is concerned, except for the dad thing, I have no regrets, either immediate or long term.

But…

It usually goes like this. Things seem perfectly fine, give or take a bad day or two, up until it’s time to sleep. My body tricks me by pretending it’s tired so I trudge on off to bed, closing up our apartment for the night. And then the head hits the pillow and the darkness falls. Except that it is never really dark – there is always light streaming through from somewhere outside in the city. And that light, much of the time, is what wakes me up.

If I do wake up, either by a bad dream (they happen sometimes) or by the light, I hope that my thoughts don’t take a dark turn. Even when they do, even when I’m convinced I’ve made nothing but mistakes and continue to make those same mistakes repeatedly – as if stuck in a Beckett play, rapping my head against a wall, somehow, by morning, everything falls back into place. It is as if the spirits have their fun at my expense in the middle of the night but by the time daylight comes, they themselves must return to sleep — and they do. They go back into my drawers and my closet. They hide under the bed. And their slumber, as opposed to mine, is restful. I do not disturb them during the day. I would love it if they left me alone at night.

My nights got really bad back in my early twenties when I was having serial killer dreams. I guess I was never much of a good sleeper, not when I had to sleep alone and I hate sleeping alone. Did I mention that? Welcome to the rest of my life, incidentally. But back then, when I was having these dreams – I would be in a room with a serial killer and I would have to try to charm them out of seeing me as one of their fresh kills. They terrified me to the point where I was afraid to go to sleep and so I sought a therapist – a very kind woman, a Jungian, who helped me through this for the next five years. A lovely thing, therapy. With her help I finished college and headed off to grad school (where I proceeded to then take further steps to ruin my life – but I’M STILL HERE!).

The bottom line is this: I know that I am having a hard time of it when my little spirit friends start partying at my expense in the middle of the night – taunting me about all of the things I’m doing wrong. What bills I haven’t paid. What I forgot to do, put off doing, or just plain decided not to do. The books I haven’t read, the toenails I haven’t manicured (and yoga again today, egads). My hair, my wrinkles, my love handles, my untouched body, my frantic libido. WHAT ELSE!?

But it is with every day that sooner or later, as the glorious California sun comes up — as the June gloom coats the sky and begins to evaporate around noon, and it is another day. The morning has a way of righting the night. But though it brings hope that things can change today, it also reminds me that we tick them off, these days, and they pass. They pass. So this of all days is a special day because it is one of a finite number. We have them now. They are gifts. Every torturous night, every sane day.

 

Letter to My Twenty Year Old Self

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I found this story via a good friend on Facebook. Cassie Boorn sent out calls to older women to write letters to their twenty year old selves. Some highlights were then posted on Mental Floss:

  • “Speaking of money, way to not have a credit card yet, that is a good move. Although, seriously: you have no concept of managing money in any kind of real way. That’s going to suck in a few years when you do get a credit card, and aren’t as good as you should be about paying off the balance.”
  • “You look like a damn model. Enjoy that concave stomach and stop being self-conscious about your body.”
  • “As for prince charming, thanks for believing that he exists. When you meet him, don’t be surprised if he doesn’t appear to be much more than a friend at first.”
  • “You didn’t develop your character because you did everything right. As that rickety old woman told once you,flowers grow in the valley, not the mountaintop. And you have to walk through the valley to get back up there.”

All of them, pearls of wisdom, my friends. I have so much to say to my 20 year-old self. I realized, though, that saying it is one thing. Hearing it at 20 is a whole different thing. Imagine, for instance, what Lindsay Lohan has been hearing from people, and how she’ll look back on her 20s. What we don’t realize as young women is that there is time ahead for the things we seem to want now. We also don’t appreciate what we have. So I wanted to write a letter to see what would come out, knowing that I probably wouldn’t have listened back then. Because, you know, we all knew everything already, right?

Here is a pic of me around that age:

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Youth and Beauty

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As I move through my 45th year, I am seeing so many things more clearly. Life seems a lot less complex than it did twenty years ago. And yet, the older I get, the more nostalgic I feel for my youth. I am bathing in a cliche. I have been watching films from the early ’80s and I have been remembering what it feels like to be desired the way only young women are. But it isn’t just that — it’s the energy, hope and life force one feels when they’re just starting out. It came with a whole bunch of neurosis. This is the ugly truth of it. In most ways, it is better to be older.

Some young women really remind me of what it felt like to be a young woman – and though I have no idea what will happen to them as they age – they seem to capture the swagger, the sexual confidence, the vulnerability and the child-like wonder of being a woman between the ages of 20 and 25. At that time in my own life I already felt old. I had no idea, really, who I was and how temporary it would all be.

If I could impart this to young women I would: it doesn’t last. Enjoy the flame while it burns.

The women that remind me of those days are:

Blake Lively

Katy Perry

And especially Daisy Lowe