I am 45 weeks into this project. Ninety percent complete. I should be heady and elated over the prospect of being done, but that is not the case. Instead, I’m edgy and intense. As if the few thousand words remaining might not be enough for me to figure out the point of my experiment. Perhaps this is how an author feels when they’re nearing the end of a book–praying that their bigger idea will rise to the surface, or shitting themselves that it won’t.
My late friend, Carla, inspired this blog. I met her when I was young and at the start of my adult life, which meant that we shared a lot of beginnings. Losing her when I was 50 stoked the urgency I felt around this new decade and pushed me to express myself. I imagined a collection of amusing installments about middle age, menopause, and growing older. I thought I’d bang it out in 52 weeks, giving myself a brief hiatus for Christmas and spring break. FACT: this post marks week 88, and I still have five to go.
Throughout the journey, I’ve suffered huge gaps in consistency. I’ve been flattened by the shame that accompanies vulnerability. I’ve had temper tantrums and lamented starting this damn thing too many times to count. I’ve also enjoyed moments of pure ecstasy. I can’t begin to describe how good it feels to hit publish and then cross the week off my list. How amazing it is when someone texts to say, “I relate” and “good job.” I hate that I’ve needed the encouragement, but, fuck it, I have. If my dear friend, Kelli, hadn’t texted me every time I posted–and, more importantly, every time I didn’t–this little vanity project of mine would have floated off into oblivion somewhere around week 12.
In the past year-and-a-half, I’ve questioned just about everything in my life. There are a few topics I’m still too chicken to address, but mostly I’ve gone there. Overturning my relationships, my disappointments, my childhood, and my insecurities. I’ve contemplated death non-stop. But mostly, I’ve sat with what it means to enter a stage of life that isn’t driven by my looks or sexuality. From the time I hit puberty until the year following menopause, this was my primary identity. This was my consistent source of validation. Even after giving birth to my children in my late 30s, the need to be desired continued to define who I thought I was. It wasn’t always conscious, and I fought against it constantly, but, still, it’s what I led with. Shedding this layer has been both devastating and emancipating. In peeling away the skin of youth, my ugly parts–self-importance, jealousy, anger, denial–have all shown up. And, oh, how they’ve raged. But the loss has led (as it so often does) to liberation, and a greater ability to love. Especially me.
Carla and I had a complicated relationship. It was mostly long-distance, and our lives looked very different. As a result, we sometimes fell into a habit of pretense and superficiality. But sitting with her in the hours before her death, all of our bullshit disappeared. None of it mattered. She had bigger fish to fry than kowtowing to personality. And I had the responsibility to open my heart as wide as I could in order to witness and support her work of moving on. In the end, how different we thought we were fell away, because our souls converged at the intersection of truth: our sameness.
Maybe that’s the moral of the story. Get to the truth before the end.
