Luminous
I haven't written much here lately because life has been a little exhausting and I've been dealing with getting my brain in order, which has been a heavy task in this here age - especially when you realize that in the span of a year, you've had the same medical procedure twice, under two different circumstances, and yet the same words are used. It's literally crazy to be a woman.
And related, I had a dinner with a friend recently where she – also a member of the dead parents club – described the years after her mother's death as "lost" years. Hearing that out loud made so much sense, as I, too, was like where did the time go? It's simultaneously the longest time in the world (some of that is due to our daily political crap) and yet I can remember things that happened five years ago as if it was yesterday. I have been feeling mildly nostalgic on Facebook recently (thanks, recent birthday) and looking at photos of me ten years ago just fills me with a certain amount of softness: this kid was determined, ambitious, had some skeletons in her closet, and I don't know if she would've judged the person that she became rather harshly. Honestly, I think she'd be disappointed in me but I also know for a fact that the vague goals that she had weren't for the sake of anything other than trying to prove herself in a world that felt stacked, vaguely, against her.
Can you tell I just had a birthday? It's been filling me with a weird amount of nostalgia. I relate to that Paul Simon line "why am I soft around the middle now" (the answer is two pregnancies in under two years) and I guess I am not officially "young" anymore but I still have ideas, and I feel like I have a clear and interesting voice. But it's hard. I've been feeling softer towards myself and my ever-high expectations recently, because I've been realizing that there's this whole cohort of folks who are just the right age to have experienced depressions 1 & 2 in the aughts so they never quite got a leg up in having a career and meanwhile, they're seen as old and behind the times. It's a crazy paradox. And I've noticed that when it comes to people who are my age who are more "successful" well, they're not my age. They're a couple of years behind, a couple of years ahead. And I'm sure that those years made all the difference.