Mid-Life

Oh I know it's been awhile.

I haven't had much to say.  About anything.

Well that's not true.  I have lots to say about everything.  They're just not very important thoughts. They're more like rants and vents and there are plenty of crazy rants on the internet.  You don't need to come here to read that.

There it is.  In a nutshell.  I haven't been feeling very...important...

...and I have been feeling very insignificant.

2017 has not been a very good year for me.

I mean, no one has died.  We all still have 10 fingers and 10 toes each.  We have both eye balls.

Here's the issue.  Actually, there are two issues.  I've known they were coming, yet they still seem to have snuck up on me me and I don't know where to go from here.  So here it is...

I turn 40 next month.  And I have a teenager.

F - O - R - T - Y

How did this even happen?  What have I done with the past forty years?  Where did they go?  I still feel like I'm 30.  Or 25 even.  Now I know what all those 60 year old men meant when they say on their dating profiles that they don't feel their age and identify with women 20-25 years younger than they are.  I feel like that.  I feel like it was just yesterday that I was graduating from high school with my whole life in front of me.  Now I wonder if my best years are behind me.  Did I squander it?  My life?  All those years?  Is it too late?  I should have accomplished something really, really huge by now.  I should have written a book or changed a life or created something really amazing.  I feel like that's what 20 year old me would have expected of me.  But now I don't even know what success looks like.

I should have my shit together by now.  I should be comfortable in my skin. 

Shouldn't I?

Q has turned 13.  He's in high school this year.

It was just yesterday I had a blonde, curly haired toddler running around the house with a hot wheels car in one hand, calling me 'mama', and falling asleep with his hand on my face.  Now, he's got feet bigger than mine.  With hair on his toes.  HAIR ON HIS TOES, PEOPLE.  Do you know he shaved for the first time on Wednesday?  He shaved the peach fuzz on his top lip that was getting darker and darker, almost by the day. He has thoughts and feelings separate from my own.  In face, purposely separate from my own.  Because you cannot agree with your mother.  You just cannot.  It seems like I blinked and he grew in the second it took.  I miss my baby.  I miss smelling his hair and apparently it's 'weird' to do that now. 
 
All of this has made me realize that I am powerless to stop time.  I cannot just ask to stop the ride so I can catch my bearings and figure out my next steps.  Life is going to keep going whether I participate in it or not. 

I don't want to waste the rest of my life mourning the past.  I've spent most of the year doing so and it hasn't gotten me anywhere.  I want to feel like I still have something to give, even though I'm (almost) 40.  Okay, so I'm not 20.  And who knows, maybe it's a good thing.  I can't change it, so I better accept it. 

But here's the thing.  Party stores sell supplies for 40th parties that say, "Over the Hill".  What is that nonsense?  Over the hill?!?!  What hill?  Was it a really small hill? 

I'm not sure I am ready to embrace 40.  Or embrace that I have a teenager.  I mean, I'll embrace the teenager - if he'll let me...