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Birthday update
Friday, October 11th, 2013 05:06 pmTurned 67 yesterday. When did I ever expect to get so old?
Noticing lately that when I read some case history that begins “67-year-old woman with …”, I imagine, fairly accurately, some old-lady-ish type who is still ‘hale and hearty’ but looks careworn, perhaps tired, and has crepey skin. But when I think of myself … well, let’s just say that every morning when I swing my legs out of bed I’m surprised at the crepey skin I see. Three years from 70 I should be feeling older than this … or, perhaps, working harder at creating more stamina.
People checked in on me, asking if my birthday was a good one. Mostly people in my life today don’t seem to know that birthdays have been problematic for me for nearly all of my adulthood (yes, the result of a traumatic birthday at the beginning of what turned otu to be a divorce). If anything, they get easier as fewer people feel compelled to make a fuss. I notice that the last ‘big’ one, 65, I got all tense about making sure I was given ‘important-enough’ gifts. And Dear Husband pulled together a list of well-researched delightful experiences and invited me to choose one. I loved the list. And then didn’t choose any.
Compare and contrast that with our 25th wedding anniversary, for which we could find nothing we both wanted to do that might be celebratory, and thus did actually nothing. Or, in a different telling, we gave a party (which he liked), and on a different night we went dancing (which I liked) … and thus had two celebrations that were each satisfactory for only one of us. And this became one of the reasons I eventually gave up trying.
In a practice group I’m in (on-line, like so much today), I mentioned that I was isolating a little bit. Somebody gave me commentary to the effect that a little isolation is a dangerous thing because it can only lead to more isolation unless I yank myself out to engage with total strangers about nothing much … but my experience tends to be the opposite.
Today, for example, though I’ve been fairly isolated much of this week, I’m finally writing instead of playing solitaire, and I’m back to unpacking boxes after more than a week of just looking at them, and otherwise generally feeling happy and productive. Even though it’s been raining for two days almost continuously and I got properly soaked earlier going grocery shopping.
My mother lived to be nearly 90, most of the last 5 years of it sitting or lying in bed. I dinna think I’ll choose to do that. But at present there’s no reason not to choose keeping on keeping on. So I am.
Noticing lately that when I read some case history that begins “67-year-old woman with …”, I imagine, fairly accurately, some old-lady-ish type who is still ‘hale and hearty’ but looks careworn, perhaps tired, and has crepey skin. But when I think of myself … well, let’s just say that every morning when I swing my legs out of bed I’m surprised at the crepey skin I see. Three years from 70 I should be feeling older than this … or, perhaps, working harder at creating more stamina.
People checked in on me, asking if my birthday was a good one. Mostly people in my life today don’t seem to know that birthdays have been problematic for me for nearly all of my adulthood (yes, the result of a traumatic birthday at the beginning of what turned otu to be a divorce). If anything, they get easier as fewer people feel compelled to make a fuss. I notice that the last ‘big’ one, 65, I got all tense about making sure I was given ‘important-enough’ gifts. And Dear Husband pulled together a list of well-researched delightful experiences and invited me to choose one. I loved the list. And then didn’t choose any.
Compare and contrast that with our 25th wedding anniversary, for which we could find nothing we both wanted to do that might be celebratory, and thus did actually nothing. Or, in a different telling, we gave a party (which he liked), and on a different night we went dancing (which I liked) … and thus had two celebrations that were each satisfactory for only one of us. And this became one of the reasons I eventually gave up trying.
In a practice group I’m in (on-line, like so much today), I mentioned that I was isolating a little bit. Somebody gave me commentary to the effect that a little isolation is a dangerous thing because it can only lead to more isolation unless I yank myself out to engage with total strangers about nothing much … but my experience tends to be the opposite.
Today, for example, though I’ve been fairly isolated much of this week, I’m finally writing instead of playing solitaire, and I’m back to unpacking boxes after more than a week of just looking at them, and otherwise generally feeling happy and productive. Even though it’s been raining for two days almost continuously and I got properly soaked earlier going grocery shopping.
My mother lived to be nearly 90, most of the last 5 years of it sitting or lying in bed. I dinna think I’ll choose to do that. But at present there’s no reason not to choose keeping on keeping on. So I am.