The clocks fell back and who knows what time it is. Time is a construct and November blows it all up. Feeling upside down in a November kind of way —which blankets, which lights, what’s for dinner? September shine is muted now, slick with cold rain and dissolved good intentions.
We talk about a getaway, two nights, not far, somewhere pretty where we can eat good food and see something new. A change of pace (though our pace is almost standstill here in the late middle of our lives). We realize, after hours of research, that we live in a big, lovely, comfortable house with books and food and wine, and why on earth would we ever go anywhere? So we never go anywhere and the kids lament our stagnancy. I watch ambient rooms on the TV, cozy spaces, big windows, bookshelves, lovely rugs and nice furniture. A beautiful fire burns in an aesthetically pleasing fireplace. The real stove burns next to me, and the big real windows, and the nice furniture and the good red rug and the best cat. All real, all right here. Why would I ever go anywhere? I kind of want to go somewhere, though. Kind of.
Maybe this is just me. Maybe it always was and I didn’t have a name for it. We don’t think so much about our bodies when we’re young, unless they knock us all the way down. That little early 80s freakout in Bermuda because the land was so small and the water so big? That was anxiety —now I know. The waiting for social shit to end so I can breathe. The retreats to bathrooms at parties for just a blessed minute to myself. The impulse to run — from the restaurant, the class, the meeting, the grocery — just run! Save yourself! From what, exactly? It wasn’t all menopause, some of it is just me.
I wake in the morning with a percolating mind. Things to ask the yet-to-be-discovered therapist of my dreams. Things that need done. A hook for the bathroom door. Clean the filthy windows. Make the vet appointment. A mammogram, the eye doctor. The poop-in-a-box thing. People I’m neglecting. All the shoulds. Figure a way to exercise with the fucked up foot. All the lists and notes, the newsletters and magazines. The books and the books and the books. These are good problems, objectively not even problems, and I am a ridiculous person. Again, the therapist.
I live in a house that sent sons to the Civil War, on land that people loved and lost. There’s glass buried in the back field and rusting farm equipment lurking in the woods. A cistern underneath and the same moon above. Always the same inconstant moon, witness to the fools we will always be.
I feel badly for the bees. They fill the front window and I suck them up with the vacuum. They’re bad bees, not even bees, maybe wasps. If they are left unchecked — unsucked — they will fill my house and sting us. They are a threat. They’re just little guys, though, unlucky enough to find themselves on the inside of my window and then on the inside of a vacuum bag. I feel badly for them.
I play mindless games on my phone. When there’s too much on my mind, or stuff I can’t face, it helps to clean up a pile of objects or clear out a parking lot. On my phone. I like word games, but lately it’s the puzzles where you just fix everything. Match shit and sweep it away. Put blocks together and clean it up. It doesn’t require much of the brain, just a bit of pattern recognition and a desire to organize. I have a great desire to organize. I like the one that’s just a pile of stuff and you have to clean it up. I have no idea what it’s called. I don’t care. I just want to clean up the pile. When the day-to-day decisions become too much, just let me clean up this little pile of shit on my phone first.
My name finally came up on the therapist’s waitlist, this will be my fourth. The first, hired and paid by my ex-mother-in-law a lifetime ago, told me to stay in my bad marriage (I didn’t). The second kept looking at her watch and asking me to talk about my mother (I did, but didn’t need to). The third was a very nice man who helped me through a rough summer. Who wasn’t having a rough summer in 2017? Hoping the fourth is my girl. I need a girl.
I’ve grown a thin, weird shell around myself. A force field of sorts that keeps the world at bay. Sometimes it keeps things I want at bay, though, like affection. I will sometimes spurn affection from my most beloved for no discernable reason. Protect the shell. This all sounds a bit mad and I’m trying to figure it out, but I’ve got a new layer. Like a callous. Fall down enough, you get calloused. A little jumpy, self-protective. I don’t like it, but there it is. I don’t know if the shell wants a gentle breaking or to be left in place. I’m still learning about myself.
The clock broke. The spinning washer shook the shelf and threw the clock on the floor, scattering plastic shards, sending a single battery spinning across the room. I stuffed it in the trash with the tray of chicken fat and the cat-piss-soaked-paper and took it outside to the big can. How November appropriate, broken time out with the garbage.
Cheers! 🥂
Lisa
Things to share:
Enjoying Alain de Botton’s How Proust Can Change Your Life, even though I’ve read little Proust. “Our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.”
- has written a great piece about food and autoimmune disorders. My thyroid is making noise here in midlife and this gave me a lot to think about.
I am loving The 52 Project.
started it to “ … discuss matters of aging as it relates to being a woman, and how that infiltrates health, culture, the internet, friendship, family, and more.” More please.Karl Ove Knausgard on being fully immersed in life:
"What makes life worth living? No child asks itself that question. To children life is self-evident. Life goes without saying: whether it is good or bad makes no difference. This is because children don't see the world, don't observe the world, don't contemplate the world, but are so deeply immersed in the world that they don't distinguish between it and their own selves."
I loved these vignettes! They're unhurried but they cover a lot of ground. Rich, but not dense. Lovely writing.
Relating very strongly to this piece Lisa, especially #2, 3 and 9. And yes, its not all menopause, in fact I'm not sure that much of it is menopause, I tend to think menopause just lends a magnifying glass to what was already there, challenging us to face what needs facing in our lives. Thanks for giving voice to these experiences in such a relatable and vulnerable way ❤