Alright, who slipped me their meds?

Oh my, where to start? I have so many thoughts in my head lately. It could be brilliance, or it could be madness. I never know with myself. I almost started this post with, "This is going to be the best work of my life." Because then whatever I said would seem deeper, wouldn't it? But I flatter myself a humble blogger, so I'm settling for this:

I'm going through a mid(ish)-life crisis.

Blame childbirth, blame infant loss - whatever the cause, I'm am no longer invincible. I no longer think that my bad physical luck + parasailing = big owie. No, it would be my death. (Mark my words.) Because we are all marching to our deaths. I know, it sounds morbid. I almost didn't leave the house for a few days, because I really, really want to live to kiss my great-grandlings at their weddings, but then we needed milk, and I realized my clock was still ticking, even inside. Yeah, there's no hiding. Death will find us all and sometimes we won't see it coming. At some point you have to come to grips with that and then get over it.

In a way, it's terribly depressing. I mean, this life seemed so limitless for my younger years. All the boys to crush on, all the books to read, all the countries to see. But now I've accomplished many of my major life milestones - college, marriage, children - and I realize that reading can be too consuming for me and traveling costs a lot of cash. So really life is just about the day-to-day monotony.

When I recognized that most of my life, most of my mortal existence, is going to be simple, I had some regrets. Not that my life won't be the whirlwind mixture of adventure, success, fame and spontaneity that I once assumed it would be, but that I haven't been glorying in the simplicity; that I've taken steps down my hallway each day when I could have leaped. After all, how many steps do I have left in this life? Why not dance? Why not add panache to my mundane tasks?

I also felt bad that I don't cry more. That when it's time to hurt - whether major loss or small upset - that I don't really, really let myself feel it. I think if someone were to take away my emotions, I would almost miss sadness as much as happiness. And really, isn't joy a combination of the two? A recognition that hard times makes good times even sweeter? That's true joy, in my opinion. So next time I'm hurting, I'm going to feel it to its gut-wrenching core. And when I start to feel better, I'm going to laugh until it hurts. Why not?

Finally, isn't it great that this life - our imperfect sojourns on earth - isn't eternal? That there is an end? That we all go out in a dramatic puff, whether it's unexpectedly or after long descent? Isn't there some dramatic flourish to that? I think it's poetic. (Even though I kind of think poets are narcissists - and that's OK. I choose not to like a lot of poetry! The freedom!)

I also think I'm starting to sound like someone who might have a fridge magnet that boasts, "Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt." (Or worse, a Garfield poster that says, "Hang in there.")

And that, my friends, is the scariest part of this whole post.



p.s. Not my best work.

p.p.s. Not even close.

p.p.p.s. We put up our tree.