I wish that I could remember the first time I ever sat down to write a blog post- like, what I was thinking or what I hoped to accomplish, but I don’t. I have a vague idea that it all started at my hand me down tile-topped kitchen table, in the dining nook at my little house on Park street in Pacific Grove, but that’s a watery memory at best. Of course, I was a different person then, too- I think most of us were different people fourteen years ago. I was still duking it out with addiction back then, and younger, of course, but even younger in some ways than most at thirty-five because of my struggles. I was in the midst of some of the worst of my battles, though I didn’t know it then. It’s hard to see where you are when you’re in the thick of it. And to complicate matters, I was trying to raise two daughters of vastly different ages- one thirteen, the other just a baby back then- while also stuck in a broken relationship and slapping on a mask every day, showing up as this career woman, desperately hoping it didn’t slip and show what was beneath. There were beautiful times then, and some really terrible ones too, and lots of it I tried to capture in writing with After The Party (I’ll try to come back and link this, but the odds are good that it will prove too difficult or I’ll forget.)
I’m guessing that it was 2011, but it could have been 2012 or even 2013, I honestly don’t know. Whenever it happened to be, it seems light years away now. The broken relationship fell away, piece by piece, by the end of 2014. The little house on Park street was left behind in March of 2015, and my relationship with addiction ended in April of that year, in a way that was so final that it’s almost hard to believe that person was really me at all. Of course, it wasn’t really me, but you know what I mean. Hard to believe that version of me ever existed, and harder still to fathom the more time that passes.
My daughters are 27 and 14 now, respectively, and the center of my life. I’m a grandmother too, to a three year old boy and an eight month old little girl. I’ve moved across the country and back again, gone from someone in bankruptcy to a single mom who bought a house all on her own. I have worked very, very hard to make up for being who I was, make up for lost time, make amends for being such a terrible person for so long.
And somewhere along the way, hidden in the busy-ness and the moving from one spot to the next, a little voice in the back of my head asked “What are you running from?” but I would brush it away and tell myself that, no, I wasn’t running from anything, I was running toward…everything! A big dream, a better house, closer to family, further from family, away from the ocean, back to the ocean. Maybe I was trying to make up for lost time, cram as much life into a decade as I could. Maybe I was…I don’t know. Looking for the version of me that I saw in my head, the person I knew I could be if only I had this thing, or that thing, or reached this next goal?
Now, here I sit, at another computer in another house, fourteen years (give or take) in the future, on the first day of 2025. The last New Year of my 40’s, 50 barreling toward me at the speed of light…and I’ll be honest with you: For all that I have accomplished on paper- the career, the house, the things; and the truly important achievements- two really good kids of whom I am so incredibly proud, good relationships with my parents that are, thankfully, still here. And learning that I am, like, the BEST grandma on earth…for all of that, I am so grateful.
But the truth is, in all of that, I have lost myself again. In all that making up to the people I loved so much and hurt so much, in all of that busy-ness and restlessness- for, whether it was running away or running toward, it was running all the same, right? In centering my children, which I do not regret for one second, and all the while working and achieving and pushing myself…I think I was too afraid to be still and see what was missing.
Me.
I know that sounds ridiculous, and as a matter of fact it’s almost embarrassing to write it down because it seems so cheesy. But that doesn’t make it less true.
And I think if you ask any woman who has thrown herself into life with other people, be it children or a husband/wife, or just a really big, demanding extended family, a career, or often all of these things…she will tell you it’s true. You devote yourself wholeheartedly to this life, only to look up one day and realize you’ve made so much room for everyone and everything else that you’ve left none for yourself.
Now my children are much older- one with a family of her own, and the other in the midst of that adolescent separation stage that is absolutely normal and necessary, and still incredibly hard and sad, especially because she is my last one. She needs me, but not the way a toddler does, or a pink-cheeked seven year old with mischievous, twinkling eyes does, demanding attention while she butchers knock-knock jokes. I LOVED those years, I loved them so much, and I know nothing on earth can bring them back.
We can never go back, only forward. Just as I wave goodbye to 2024, I have to let my children grow and change and move away from me, little by little, as they are supposed to. And before you know it, it will just be me, on my own, with a lot of life ahead of me still, God willing. I have had a ton of joy in my life, and equally, I have had a lot of sorrow. Perhaps more than my fair share of both.
I refuse to equate this unavoidable new era of my life with the end of everything worthwhile. It’s not the end of my life, it’s the beginning of a new leg of the journey. One I hope will be exciting and fun, full of adventure and sparkle, joy and even romance…maybe. And like any new venture, I’m a little scared. There’s no point pretending otherwise, and there’s nothing worth doing that isn’t kind of terrifying, really.
One thing I know for sure is that life is so precious, and it goes by SO fast. So fast. I’m reminded of this every single day. Watching my kids raising their own kids, my friends losing their parents, or becoming caregivers themselves, the years roaring past. At the speed of light, my friends. Faster than I ever imagined possible.
I owe it to myself- we owe it to ourselves- to find ourselves again. To love the women we find ourselves to be now with the same devotion we have loved others our whole lives. To indulge ourselves, care for ourselves, listen to ourselves, protect ourselves, and most importantly of all, to show ourselves the time of our lives. Because that’s exactly what it is. Time.
And that’s precisely what I intend to do. Happy New Year. Look out, 2025.
The Change(ling) 