It’s never too late
To start (over or anything)
“I’ve learned, as time passes, all the things you are afraid of will come and they will go and you will be alright” Stevie Hicks
I was 44 when I left my nearby 2 decade heterosexual relationship
I was 46 when I met the love of my life
I was 49 when I married her
As Jane Fonda says “it’s never too late” as I would add “to start over”
Late in May 2017, on a cold Autumn morning, I changed lanes.
I didn’t know it at the time but in looking back, which is how we all connect the dots, it was a watershed moment for us all. Now I can laugh at the lunacy of the roles I was playing and when I’m being a kind and generous friend to myself I give kudos to myself for not throwing in the towel, At other times when my younger friends are berating themselves for wrong turns I remind them of my follies — that usually simmers them down!
On paper I would say my life looked like it was good and happy and successful and whatever else people like to throw about in comparison; either to themselves or other more successful people.
But I was anxious.
All.
The.
Time.
I kept a very tight lid on what I shared with anyone especially my family; because it was
All.
So.
Precarious.
I felt like I was one bad day away from a complete mental breakdown.
Of course I never let that thought enter my head. I had no option. I had to keep going. I’d made my bed so I’d better lie in it.
Most of the time, behind closed doors, I would write journal entry after journal entry praying to a god I’ve never believed in and asking for guidance I knew I wouldn’t take.
Back to May.
It was cold, unusually cold and perhaps that could have given me some glimpse of what would be coming down the line but of course, hindsight only really ever offers you that.
Our family dynamic changed, in the end for the very best, but this big life event that, with respect to my family, I am not sharing — was the catalyst for a change in my life, whilst it’s not my story to tell. This is.
At the age of 44 I found myself in a dead-end.
Relationship.
Work.
Friendships.
All of it.
Because ultimately I had learnt to silence myself, mostly from myself.
I read these lines the other day and I think it’s all true, and here is where it started, to change …
“Leaving is not enough. You must stay gone. Train your heart like a dog. Change the locks even on the house he’s never visited.
You lucky, lucky girl. You have an apartment just your size. A bathtub full of tea. A heart the size of Arizona, but not nearly so arid.
Don’t wish away your cracked past, your crooked toes, your problems are papier mache puppets you made or bought because the vendor at the market was so compelling you just had to have them.
You had to have him. And you did. And now you pull down the bridge between your houses, you make him call before he visits, you take a lover for granted, you take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic.
Make the first bottle you consume in this place a relic. Place it on whatever altar you fashion with a knife and five cranberries. Don’t lose too much weight. Stupid girls are always trying to disappear as revenge. And you are not stupid.
You loved a man with more hands than a parade of beggars, and here you stand. Heart like a four-poster bed. Heart like a canvas. Heart leaking something so strong they can smell it in the street.”
- Marty McConnell (widely and incorrectly attributed to Frida Kahlo)
So I did. I left him, although it took me a year.
When a life shock happens it does just that, shocks your socks off and I guess then you have a decision to make — a fork in said dead-end if you like. You can stare there, blinking in horror at what is your life then shrug and go right back into it because, let’s be honest, real change is hard and gnarly; none of us really want to do it.
Or you can stare down into the abyss of the unknown and jump. I mean fuck it right, how bad can it be.
I jumped.
It wasn’t thrilling.
It was mostly messy and required a great deal of support; from my sister, my parents and my ever–present, ever caring friends. In fact the next couple of years were mostly a shit-show as I took down everything I had precariously structured as a life and stood there bare and exposed and unsteady, at first.
In her article, in Vanity Fair, Brooke Baldwin says, of speaking up and finding her voice, until now:
“I wanted to obey. I wanted to please. I wanted to be the good girl. I was afraid they’d let me go — joke’s on me.
It starts in childhood. We want approval — from our parents, then our lovers, then our bosses… It’s a transaction and it’s a gamble, and the house always wins….And it turns out that once you find your voice, you can’t unfind it. You can still say yes, as long as it’s using that voice. “
So here’s what I did say yes to:
Yes to getting “divorced”.
Yes to starting the fuck over.
Yes to removing my armor.
Yes to finding new love.
Brooke went on to say; “Burn the boats. Unraveling. A funny word. I always took it to mean “coming apart,” but it also can mean “getting to the truth.” Now I realize it’s both.”
Welcoming to unraveling, I hope you find yours. Here is my truth.
I am now 51 years old — almost 2 years into my marriage and 6 years into the life of my making. The first thing I did was to admit, to myself, that anxiety dogged my life (because I wasn’t living MY life) so I addressed that first — taking cipralex for two years. During those two years I went to work understanding the triggers for my anxiety; once I knew those I was able to ween myself off cipralex and develop a much healthier relationship with my emotions.
I also implemented boundaries for me (which is what boundaries really are anyhow) especially with my family of origin — where the route of my anxiety began. I also made some significant changes in the people who I let into my inner sanctum (so to speak); and stopped being attracted to bright shiny things (with the misperception that if I could ‘make them like and see me’ I was likeable and see-able).
It’s also taken a significant amount of personal and spiritual work which continues but it’s just part of learning and growing and I would have done the work anyhow. Now I just have my best mate doing it with me.
I remember the darkness though. I remember being woken with panic attacks with the utter terror that I had nowhere I could go. It all felt too big.
All we have to do is to put one small step in front of the other. Surround yourself with the support of real and authentic people who share both their successes and failures and whose intent, like yours, is to move you from where you are to where you want to be.
