Being 49

It wasn’t until this last month that I realized that I completely missed being 49 because I have been so pre-occupied with the big 5-0. So in our last week together, I’m taking pause to turn all my attention on:

Being 49 (or signs of):

1. Wearing one earring. Not because I lost one. But because I got distracted and didn’t put the other one in. (Either that or I took one out the night before and got distracted…)
2. Marveling at the reappearance of pimples. Feeling youthful.
   
3. Grabbing a pair of scissors, instead of a comb, when knots reappear in my hair after a 40 year absence.
4. Wearing my underwear inside out with the tag sticking out of my pants. (Not on purpose.)
5. Rooting through the trash for something that is still in my hand.
6. Worrying about 3 things at once, but unable to think about one thing long enough to produce a coherent sentence.
7. Words as elusive as fireflies, flickering in and out of my awareness before I can claim them. Mainly nouns. Speaking without them. Hoping my family can guess.  Lots of charades and pointing. And frustration.
8. Amazed that I can’t figure out what day of the week it is.
9. Ditto on the above; but about the season. (Seriously.)
10. Why is everything so dark and blurry and quiet?
11. Reading requires lighting and eye glasses and patience and context clues.
12. More and more of my friends lean in to hear me.
13. More and more, I have to ask mumbling people to repeat themselves.
14. Sometimes there is a little man in my ear sending Morse Code.
15. I consider learning Morse Code to find out what he is saying.
16. Pandora suggests pharmaceutical cream for my aging, itchy vagina.
17. My vagina starts talking to me.
18. Comfort trumps appearance. Minimizers and lifters are abandoned, then bras altogether, at least at home, and more and more, in public. My younger self would be appalled.
    
19. Suddenly wanting to wear dresses and skirts, not to be feminine, but to be free. (And, alright, feminine.)
20. Letting my belly go. Letting it release into itself. Getting to know it instead of hiding it. Instead of scolding it. Instead of hating it.
21. Living the body I have. Letting go of thoughts of something else.
22. Living the life I have. Letting go of thoughts of something else.
23. Living the issues I have.
24. Noticing depression. Without trying to chase it away.
25. Recognizing despair and how it forces greater alignment and attunement to self/soul/spirit.
26. New insight into my mother’s sedentary years.
27. Finding myself sitting more than moving.
28. Growing appreciation of benches in public places.
29. Napping, even after caffeine.
30. Inability to sleep even when I’m exhausted.
31. I have to get up to pee.
32. I have to get up to pee.
33. I have to get up to pee.
34. Less urgency. Time stretched further. No longer now or never. Some things can happen another time. Or other lives.
35. Living withing paradox.
36. Time suddenly cut short.
    
37. Feeling both incredibly generative and acutely despairing.
38. Loving the world more and more while infuriated with its same antics.
39. Wanting to be alone and with people.
40. Wanting excitement and contentment.
41. Wanting to feel balanced and loose.
    
42. My knees suddenly have a lot to say when I go from standing to the floor or from the floor to standing. I’m ignoring this in the hope it will go away.
43. More and more of my desires are shifting from the external to the internal.
44. I’m my favorite person. Sometimes.
45. My mind turns me on and turns on me.
46. I’m beginning to doubt reality.
47. My dreams bleed into my days.
48. My insurance company is the first to send me 50th birthday greetings, suggesting greater coverage.
49. I realize that everything passes. The bad. The good.
    And even,
    me…

~
Tribute to my 40’s
30s Restrospective
Turning 20.)