This is 40…
Do you remember when we were younger, our lives seemingly falling apart constantly, and we thought to ourselves “Damn, I can’t wait to be an adult and have my shit together.” I feel like, for me, 40 was the talisman of adulthood. Your 40’s are supposed to be about stability: you’ve moved past your job hopping 20’s and career building 30’s and you’re finally at a place professionally where you’re flourishing. You’ve settled down, in a relationship, most likely married, having already worked through the ups and downs of single life: the heartbreaks, the disappointments, the one night stands a distance memory. You’ve paid for the wedding/house/big life event and can finally enjoy yourself again. Your 40’s should be the time when all your hopes and dreams come to fruition, or so I thought.
In the first 24 hours of being 40, I cried at least three times. Not cute little tears, the kind you brush off the cheek. I’m talking torrential flooding that makes your face swell and stay ugly for two days. First I closed on the sale of my house. Yep, same day. Kismet or coincidence, I don’t fucking know. I sobbed, because I am now homeless, so the next time I fuck my life up, the three cats and I won’t even have a place to go. I quit my job, or rather simply didn’t return to work, because fuck that place, that’s why. I’m now officially the kind of man I would go out with, if you can find the humor in that. Then I proceeded to get drunk, like really drunk, all because some guy hurt my feelings. My 40th birthday will forever be marred by the knowledge that I ruined my own birthday all because, yet again, I let some dumb dick upset me. Then I capped the evening by throwing up in the parking lot, sleeping in my car, pissing in front of a stranger, and lying in bed the whole weekend dry heaving and feeling sorry for myself. I’m the Benjamin Button of aging gracefully.
If you have a food allergy, you change your diet; you don’t stop eating.
I’ve come to the slow realization, and only after my decisions became irreversible, that whatever progress I’ve made in the past 15 years, I’ve systematically erased: financially, emotionally, everything. And now that it’s all happening just as I wanted it to, I realize…I’m running. Not forging ahead, not cutting a new path out of determination and desire. No, I’m running away from a life and a past of disappointment and mediocrity, of being ignored, cast aside. I let the mind numbing craze of living the same fucking day over and over again make me so frayed that I set my life on fire instead of making a few fine adjustments. It was easier to erase my entire life and everything I had built than of cut off access, create boundaries, and face my feelings. If you have a food allergy, you change your diet; you don’t stop eating. The great news is I’ve figured out my emotional pit falls; the bad news is I’ll be dealing with it from a cardboard box under the highway.
A lot of people don’t talk about how incredibly alienating it can feel being alone, especially as you get older. You feel this distance with everyone and everything and the more you feel it, the more you encourage it. Self-isolation is both a comfort and a curse. You feel like no one loves you, no one cares about you, and no one is there for you, and it can easily consume you. I don’t have a large network of friends, and the relationships I’ve created are shallow at best. I’ve left a string of situationships in my wake, endlessly fighting for connections that don’t exist. Some are ok with that, instead finding careers worth throwing themselves into, to fill that void, but not me. I worked all the way up that corporate ladder just to shimmy back down, doing a job I despised everyday because that’s what I thought I was supposed to do. So here I am, devoid of any emotional connection to anyone or anything, on the cusp of my greatest disappearing act ever, wondering how I got all the way here.
Self-isolation is both a comfort and a curse.
I decided to share my feelings and fears with someone. I decided to say them out loud, to divulge my secrets, to put words to all these emotions, and they were met with judgement. I exposed myself only to be ridiculed and rebuffed. My audience said I sound like the kind of people who “kill themselves”, that whole you’ll miss me when I’m gone mantra. I had to really think about what he was saying, absorb it, swish it around in my mouth. Do I want people to miss me? Do I want them to mourn me? Am I basing my biggest life decisions off the imagined responses of others? The short answer is No. The long answer is I wouldn’t be mad if anyone looked back at my absence and their heart ached a little. But the the truth is I’m sad. I’m lost. I’m confused. And instead of staying in the same place and withering away to nothingness out of desperation and despair, I took action. Maybe the wrong action, maybe the wrong decisions, but the correct sentiment. I have to leave and find something that makes me feel again. Feel good, feel alive, feel loved, feel appreciated, feel whole. Feel something. I’m not uprooting my life so everyone will look back and miss me. I don’t want to be mourned, I want to be revered. I want everyone to say fuck, that bitch really left! I don’t want sympathy after I’m gone (deceased, found face down in a cup of vodka), I want jealousy and envy and moderate consternation because I escaped it and everyone else stayed to wallow in their own mediocrity. But most of all I want to leave and find so much new life out there for myself that I never wonder what these fucking people think of me again.
Today’s message is a big yarn of emotion: motivation, aspiration and a little sentiment. You’re never alone as long as you know yourself. Be your own best friend, your support system, your biggest cheerleader. And don’t be afraid to make adjustments if you’re not exactly who you want to be. You can change yourself and your life, whenever you want, however you want, into whatever you see fit, without a single vote of approval from anyone. The best remedy is success. Go make yourself better. Focus on yourself, your mind, your body, whatever it is that isn’t 100 and make it that. It doesn’t matter what these stupid fucks think or say because the cold hard truth is that other people’s opinions about you isn’t your fucking business. The stupider you look, the better. The more outlandish, the greater. And never feel stupid because someone else can’t see your vision; other people’s idea of success does not have to be the motivating factor in your quest for happiness. Nothing says fuck you like being the only one who believed in you, and then it all magically works out.