i don’t want to be home. Too sad. Why are we all forced every year to celebrate, and feel sad if you have lost loved ones or have no body to celebrate with. It is the same in February with Valentine’s day. How about creating some days to celebrate singlehood and single parenthood or just aloneness et al.
Just a thought.
ok did the birthday thing. check. did the the halloween thing. check. did the thanksgiving thing. check. and now the xmas thing.
From September till the new year each year goes by more and more speedy. With aging and having a child, I guess, and the holidays that suddently seem so important, although when I was alone I was able to pleasantly ignore the holidays with watching movies like the Godfather, or seeing friends. When I had a staff job I enjoyed my days off and could lounge in bed, play video games, take a luxurious bath, blast my music and dance around the apartment, go for a solo walk in my then fancy and sophisticated neighborhood. Slowly my life centered on others.
When I was alone, I enjoyed the freedom. Yes I did feel the solitude occasionally and felt lonesome. Since then, occasionally I crave solitude but I rarely feel lonesome.
I have suddenly become an orphan this year. Grieving has taken up a lot of time. Having to take care of all the business surrounding two deaths. And dealing with a myriad of emotions and stifling immobility due to emotions.
Life has become hard in a different way. Life is always hard.
I remember being single with no responsibilits except myself. Oh how I felt so selfish and decadent and spoiled over time. I felt guilty that people needed to do things for people and things were expected of them. My time was my own and I did as I pleased. Boy has that now changed.
Happy Thanksgiving weekend people!
The shock is gone. I think. Although yesterday I had been distracted for a few hours and then I suddenly remembered. My heart sank. I had dealt with a few deaths recently. This was another one. The death of what seemed like everything we know to be right and correct. The death of what we see as reality. The death of hopes and dreams and a simple comfort level.
Since 9/11 life has been different in this country. I remember the 90’s and they seemed normal and relaxed. Traveling was good and fun and stress free. Living was stress free. We made good money and could get jobs fairly easily and things were reasonably priced including housing and groceries. Life seemed kind of fair. We were young and would live forever. Or so it seemed.
Then 9/11 and the whole world changed. It was in the air. And slowly with the internet helping, the world became small and scary. Especially if you were an American. Wars began and jobs were lost. People were struggling. People were watching each other and there was a bad guy in our vision. Life became hard. We got older, our parents were even older and getting sickly. We became part of the sandwich generation.
Then there was hope. Then there was Obama. But then there were the haters who did not let him actually be the President and put a stop to letting him help us. It was a struggle. The feeling was in the air. The tea party arrived and slowly but surely it became normal and ok to hate and be rude and all the things we tell our kids not to be.
And now there was Trump.
It seems I spend a lifetime waiting. There is a wait for everything. For instance, right now I am at my child’s dance studio and I am waiting for quiet in the bullpen where the parents sit and the previous class just let out. I am always waiting at some class for the class to finish or for quiet.
When i was younger I seemed to wait less. I didn’t rush to grow up. I was never waiting for that. I didn’t wait to start my career because I always struggled with what sort of career I would have. When I discovered boys, well, I rarely thought about the future, I lived in the now. I loved to the fullest in the now, simply expecting it would always be like that. I now know this is called naivety or immaturity. I think I only matured, and am still maturing, after I had a child and my parents became ill. I didn’t know to wait because I didn’t know there would be any change. Was I incapable of looking ahead? Seems so odd to me now, writing this. How could I not anticipate there would be a tomorrow, a future. had no one mentioned it to me, let alone, taught me about the future?
I guess I never learned to plan or to look ahead or to look forward to anything. This explains my years of drifting, going with the wind, free lifestyle, free spiritedness. I never waited as I didn’t know there was anything to come. Had I only known, maybe I could have, would have, planned. Maybe. Could be. I would hope. But it is easier to look back than to look forward.
When I later lived for my career, traveling and whatever love of my life that I happened to have at the moment, I was just enjoying the now. Perhaps I would wait for the end of the work day so I could go to dinner and a movie with the current love of my life. Or perhaps I would wait for the weekend to come, in anticipation of an exciting, relaxing and fun weekend without a schedule or responsibility in sight. I not only lived in the now, I also lived for myself. It now seems it was a selfish and decadent life, as I since have learned after years of living. And I now also realize that much of it was in my mind. I lacked communication and so I just thought whatever I felt. My emotions controlled me.
These days I wait all the time. I wait at classes. I wait to get quiet at night. I wait to sleep. I wait whenever I have payment for a freelance job coming to me. I wait to pay my bills. I wait to go food shopping, to clean, to do all the humdrum boring things I am not good at. I wait for difficult times to be over. I wait for all to be healthy. I wait to be able to earn a good income again. I wait for peace and happiness. I wait to be understood. I wait for time to stand still so aging will stop. I wait to win the lottery and be able to buy that wonderful, beautiful big house I pass all the time. I wait to make new friends. I wait again to be understood. And I wait. I wait in limbo. I wait.
Seems time was slower in the past. And it seems my mind could live more in the moment rather than being cluttered with things I must do, have put off doing, am trying to ignore, am trying to prioritize and so on.
I see the beautifully decorated homes that I drive by and wonder how long it took them to put up those lights and decorations. How long will they stay up? And how long will it take you to take them down and put them away. I tire just thinking about it. I can’t imagine having to do all that work for a few weeks or even days worth of display for mostly others to see briefly, for a few seconds as they drive by. Is it worth it?
It reminds me how I don’t understand big functions like weddings. I can not undertand the time, effort or money going into one day’s celebration.
But I have drifted off.
Tomorrow is Christmas Eve once again. Next week another new year. I wish it could all be slowed down. I can not pick up speed in myself to keep up with it, if that makes sense. I should be doing more, moving faster, thinking quicker to keep up the pace. Seems time is passing me by and I am standing still. And yet I am aging fast.
The problem with thinking you are young is that one day you look in the mirror and ask what happened, who are you? If you are taken for 10 years younger or even more, and date 10 years younger or even more and you are a woman, that day comes abruptly. Suddenly you, in number, are seemingly upon middle age yet still look like a kid. And all of a sudden you grow up and can not enjoy that in between time and you must jump from young to old immediately without settling for a while in between. And people see you so differently. They react so differently to you. Once you were a beauty and all eyes on you, now you are invisible and a burden. And I am not even yet a senior and this is the case. Invisible is what you are when you are a woman, middle-eged, living in the United States.
So these are my reflections this a.m. the day befoe Christman Eve, 2015.
Merry Christmas.
thinkingsblog 