Awful and Awesome

Am I losing my mind? The regularity of which I ask myself this question is striking. My musing on this matter has increased in recent months due, in no small part, to milestones such as a global pandemic, racial tensions, and the economic doom - soon to be en route, all of which has me a sort of out of sorts like I’ve not experienced before.

But then, I am an empath. I carry everyone’s weight.

Or so I remind myself when I am asking myself as to the security of my sanity.

But then too, I remind myself of the flat fact of my age - 45 - and of the feeling of inhabiting that number. And I look around at my life a little more, as though from a spectator’s point of view…

This life stage presents such a contrast; the feeling of possibly having it all together at last, of finally growing into yourself, of joy, of confidence. But also a sort of grief - for the past, for people and for paths not walked. For potential now gone.

Another question I constantly ask myself in my inner dialogue is ‘where is the joy?’, because like seriously, where is it?!

I see my friends and I so squashed from time to time by life’s responsibilities, by caring for parents and children who are becoming teens and adults, by money worry, by shape-shifting careers that are melding into new ways of working that just don’t really suit, by relationships that may not be fit for purpose any longer.

I feel a sense that we are all having a midlife crisis, collectively asking, ‘Is this it? Is this all there is?’

And I ask…

Am I invisible now? Why don’t I want to go out anymore? Why am I so tired? Why can’t I sleep?

Why do I want to burn it all down?

HORMONES

And then I remember, ‘ah, this must be perimenopause!’ When our hormones are beginning to take their leave, our fertile years lessening, do we feel this loss as a loss of our purpose too? Do we feel, deeply and unconsciously, that our best years are behind us?

Perimenopause can last anything up to ten years - TEN YEARS! And it affects us in multiple, insidious ways. Low mood, low libido, unhappiness, anger, dissatisfaction, low energy, weight gain, loss of self-confidence… what larks!

There is a study that states that women’s happiness bottoms out at age 40. And that depression and despair typically hit at 44. It happens to people regardless of class, or of whether they are single or attached, parents or not.

So far, so cheery, right?

GRIEF

I think grief has many guises. Not just the grief of losing loved ones through death, but the irregular, smaller grief of missing out. Of smaller losses. Of missing old friends, missing old fun, missing people you once knew, old ways of working and even missing old feelings.

Missing a different sort of potential; that feeling that ‘anything could happen’. Now in midlife, of course it still can, but it feels less wild, less free, less reckless. It’s a grief you’re not really supposed to talk about, because you’re grand really, aren’t you?

But you’re kind of not grand. At all. Sometimes life is awful.

THE FLIP SIDE

But then comes the contrast. Opposing feelings to despair do push back harder, and something else creeps in, quietly at first, frequently a little unfamiliar, but recognisable nonetheless.

It’s joy.

It’s there. It’s here. It’s kind of everywhere. If we learn to tune back into it…

For me, joy isn’t in the ‘big things’ anymore, if it ever was. There is a chance I may have constructed all that crap in my own mind. Trapping myself into believing it lay elsewhere, outside myself.

Try harder, strive better, it’s ‘over there’, not here.

But no. I refute that now. It’s in the little, tiny, beautiful things. It’s in showing up, in being there. In being present with family, in getting to know them better. Through harder times the real gold is revealed.

It’s in friendships, both old and new. It’s in connecting and reconnecting. It’s in the ease between those who know you and accept you.

It’s in gardens, sunbeams on your floor, your mothers’ jewellery, ripe tomatoes, the smell of the sea, the warmth of your older children when they lean into you for contact.

It’s in noticing they’ve grown and realising you’re raising them, you’re creating lifelong relationships with them - that you’re building people! - not just the panicked, keeping- them- alive feeling of parenting their younger years. You’re building actual people! Fuck, that’s a good feeling. There’s joy there. Buckets of it.

Kids are hard. Family is hard. Caring for people can cause you to lose yourself. These are facts of life, but awareness is the win. Knowing what you’re dealing with gives power, and then you turn it around as you need it to be.

The questions I ask myself as I wander and wonder through this midlife of mine are often solved and calmed by taking a walk. By choosing a good bottle of wine that I can’t afford. By reading about human psychology. By watching 24 Hours in A&E (life-affirming) GoggleBox (best thing on telly) or Dylan Moran’s stand up show called Like Totally (it’s on YouTube, and is still the funniest thing I’ve ever watched).

And then after that, by sleeping deeply (via the calming affect of magnesium and thus not hearing my partner’s snores).

I am less soothed by scrolling social media even though I do a thousand times per day. I do not solve anything I’m worrying about by looking at other people’s lives. The challenge is to look within.

The real win is within.

time to oneself

Ultimately, as an overthinking empath, I am soothed by having some time alone.

Nothing makes me feel freer than time to myself. I was a single parent for many years since my daughters were tiny and so I had every evening alone after they went to sleep. Those solo hours restored me through a very stressful stage of life more than I could ever know. At the time though, I felt lonely, little did I know that alone time was how I coped and processed. I listened to music, I drank wine, I sat in my garden and smoked sneaky cigarettes until the stars came out, and I talked to myself a lot…

All by myself.

And I felt both free and caged. I felt strong and weak simultaneously - awful and awesome at the same time.

Then life moved on, as it always does, and after eight years our circumstances changed. We are a newly-formed, and funny-shaped, blended family with plenty of people in our orbit. It’s a glorious sort of madness.

Previously, life was so quiet that I craved connection and conversation, and now I sometimes yearn deeply for silence and solitude. So you see! Life lurches from one thing to another, it presents both horror and wonder, but still, we go on.

There is always joy; even amongst macro-stressors like pandemics and recession, there are micro-joys like those moments when your kids look up from their devices and tell you they love you, unbidden, and when you are out walking in an expanse of nature and you feel both insignificant and magnificent in equal measure.

That’s joy. That’s freedom.

Life is awful and life is awesome.

Burn it down if you want. Cry if you want. End something or begin something: the cards are yours to play. Try to understand yourself. Be wilder. Be real…

You’re not losing your mind, you’re losing your mildness.

Ellie Balfe, July 2020.

Do you feel these opposing forces? These midlife contrasts?
Tell us in the comments box down below…