48 & Better for the Wear

“ I have learned one of the most important lessons a human being can learn: how to recognize what loves you and what doesn’t.“

A few weeks ago I turned forty-eight. Not a milestone age by any means; that one is two years off. But forty-eight is forty-eight and that’s a good little chunk of time to be given on this earth, isn’t it?

I have to say I am happy to be this age. I wouldn’t go back to being young again for anything. The woman I am today fought hard to get here, to stay alive and positive and learn to find happiness and contentment where she is and as who she is. I feel at forty-eight, I am coming closer to being the girl I once was and the person I thought I would be when I was growing up.

We tend to lose ourselves in our twenties and thirties, especially women. Yes, I believe everyone is human and everyone goes through it in their lifetime (maybe several times), but women seem to give up who they are in the frenzy of finding love, marrying, and having a family, while men are already finding themselves in many ways. Maybe it’s because we go from girl to Mom instead of from boy to man. Maybe it’s because we are raised as females to be more compliant, pleasing, and agreeable. So we want to learn our new roles, get them right, be good at them as quickly as possible.

Not to say many women don’t hold off, seek education and college and career. And who knows? Maybe that route takes us to the same place and finds us wondering who we are as a person. I only know that in my own experience as a daughter, teenage mother, single mom, and then badly married wife, I gave up who I was and what I wanted to be who they needed. They didn’t make me do it, and no one forced me to change and forget. I think it happens everywhere and to everyone at some point, as I said. But I have been pretty typical in my efforts in the uphill climb that is life. And I was genuine in my efforts. I truly thought at the time that everyone else was happy in their journey, that it was a flaw in me that didn’t allow me to be happy in all that giving. I really thought, ‘this is who I am.’

Regardless, I came out of marriage and motherhood having no earthly idea who I was. Unable to recognize the face in the mirror or the person behind that face, I set about searching for me. It wasn’t pretty, but it has been a period of enormous growth for me. I’ve been able to really look into myself to find the root of who I am and have always been. I have challenged myself to a level of honesty that I had never even known existed. I have delved into the darkest pools of regret and longing, and learned to tread water there until the light came back. I have tried and failed more than a few times at pretty much everything, cried and screamed, drank and raged, laughed until I cried, punched walls, broken things… I have had a bona-fide nervous breakdown (an old way of saying the cheese fell off my cracker; I will write about that at a later date for sure), and all to come out of it better for the wear. Is that a thing, being better for wear? I know worse for wear is a commonly used expression, but I am better, so I’m using it here!

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Here I am on the downward slope to the big five-o, and truthfully, besides the cracks and pops when I try to get up too fast, and the fact my back hurts for no reason at all pretty much all the time, I like who I am now. There is something comforting about fifty looming on the near horizon.