The Mad Minstrel

The other day I had a thought that probably shouldn’t have been as funny as it was. If I got hit by a bus and they talked about it on the news, no one would say, “Oh, she was so young.”

That bothered me more than I expected, not enough to have an existential crisis or anything, but enough that I mentioned it to my wife – who promptly reminded me that if I died of cancer, they would probably still say I was young.

So apparently I’m only selectively tragic.

Which is better than nothing, I guess.

Getting older is weird because I don’t actually remember getting “old”. There was no morning when I woke up, looked in the mirror, and thought, “Ah, yes. This is what middle age looks like.” Instead, it was a hundred little things slowly peppered throughout my life.

Songs I remember hearing when they were new were suddenly on classic radio stations, which feels unnecessarily aggressive I might add. More than that, I feel like “Genie in a Bottle” was never meant to be listened to while in the produce section comparing avocados … maybe eggplants, but not avocados.

My body has also started developing strong opinions about activities it previously considered benign; sleeping, sitting, turning my head too quickly, you get the idea … if you’re reading this you’re likely in the same boat – otherwise you’d be watching reel instead of reading a blog. 😉 Anyway, I used to be able to do spectacularly stupid things to myself and wake up basically fine. Now, I alternate pillows in case the surprise neck injury I’m rockin’ was due to the aggressive nature of the firm pillow.

I’ll pause while you laugh.

I don’t actually think I’m old, I’ve just been noticing a shift lately. Though, that could be due to the fact that my fortieth birthday announced itself with all the subtlety of a drunk aunt at a wedding. You know the one, make-up up to her eyebrows and she loves everyone in the room… loudly! Or, in this case, chest pain, emergency room, and a suspected heart attack.

Nothing says young like being asked if you have a history of heart disease!

Long story short, I was fine – But knowing you’re mortal and suddenly becoming suspicious of your own internal organs are two very different things. Getting older has been a strange collection of moments like that. Some really funny, some really not, and many of them just plain weird.

When you’re twenty, most of the people around you are somewhere near the same starting line. You’re figuring out jobs, money, relationships, who you are and what the hell you’re supposed to do with yourself. By forty, everyone has scattered. At this age, some have teenagers. Some have toddlers. Someone is getting divorced. Someone else is getting married. Someone is caring for aging parents. The guy you used to date is starting over. That girl from high school has grandchildren and your friend is dating a twenty-five-year-old … Godspeed.

There really isn’t one version of midlife. And maybe that’s part of what makes this age feel so strange. When you’re younger, there always seems to be something obvious you’re supposed to be moving toward. The goals are almost culturally supplied, like flipping through a catalog.

• Stable income? Yes, please!
• Career? Sure.
• Leadership ladder? No, thank you. Please remove that from my cart.
• Family? Absolutely.

For years, there were road signs everywhere telling us where we were expected to go next. Then somewhere along the way, the signs started disappearing. The road is still going – it’s winding around corners and going off into the distance, but … quietly and subtly, all the signs faded away. I’m not sure I noticed it happening until now.

When you’re young, everyone wants to know what you’re going to do with your life. What are you studying? What do you want to be? Are you going to get married? Do you want kids? Where do you see yourself in five years? The world is your oyster, you have so much potential, you can be anything or go anywhere!

Then, one day, people stop asking.

At first, there’s something sad about that. There’s something strange about realizing you’re no longer the young person in the room. There is grief in getting older if you glance at it quickly enough. Your body has changed, your energy is gone and the world suddenly seems to be moving faster than you care to go. And as the world starts to speed by you find that you are becoming a little less visible, and that’s terrifying … but only for a minute. Then, you realize if they’re no longer looking at you, you no longer have to look at them. And suddenly, It’s liberating as hell!!

I’ve spent most of my life caring about what people thought of me, of trying to make a good impression and replaying all my conversations in my head to make sure I didn’t sound dumb . I was always checking in with myself – not to see how I felt, but to make sure people saw the best side of me. There was always an audience, even if it was one of my own making.

Now, that audience has gotten smaller. I still care what people think. I care enormously what the people I love think of me. I want to be kind. I want to be a good wife and mother and friend. I don’t want to become an asshole, and I certainly don’t want to become the woman screaming at a cashier because her coupon expired.

Everybody else … Meh.

I do miss being young sometimes. Mostly, I miss the energy. God, I miss the energy!

When I was younger, I could do everything I needed to do and somehow there was still another whole day hiding behind it. Work was over and I could go see friends, I could stay up late, I could write, watch a movie (or three), and randomly decide at eleven o’clock at night that I wanted to go somewhere. Now it can take energy just to text someone back. Some of it is age, some is parenthood ( a toddler can drain the energy from a room with an efficiency that should probably be studied) I wish I could separate which is which, but I can’t … I’m too tired.

So yes, I miss some aspects of being young but I don’t want that part of my life back – I just want the old battery. I don’t need to stay out until two in the morning, I just want enough energy at the end of the day to watch a movie with my wife after we put our kid to bed.

People talk about being young like it was a magical time and I don’t think they remember – being young is harder than we remember. You don’t have any money. Everything feels incredibly important because you haven’t lived long enough to know that you’ll survive it. Your brain is still figuring itself out. Your hormones are running half the operation. You’re desperately trying to become yourself while also trying to make everyone like you. It kinda sucks! I see younger people now and I recognize them, I recognize me in them and I don’t want to go back.

I’d take the knees and the stamina but I wouldn’t trade what I know and where I am for any of it. For the first time in my life I feel like I can make the choices I want, for me. No one is telling me where I should go and I can’t remember the last time someone asked me where I saw myself in five years. At first it was scary, but I’m realizing now that it doesn’t mean I’m lost, it means I get to choose.

Sure, the younger version of me had endless roads ahead of her, but she also had the whole world looking over her shoulder, asking where she was going and what she planned to make of herself.

Now I have a life.

I have a wife I love, the family I always wanted, a career that has given me stability … and maybe someday I finally figure out how to make writing a bigger part of it … or maybe I’ll come up with entirely new dreams that never would’ve occurred to me at twenty, I don’t know yet – and strangely, that feels okay. The world has started looking somewhere else. At first, I thought that was the sad part, now I’m beginning to think it might be the gift.

The road is still there and for the first time nobody is watching to see which way I turn.