Wildness

“She was free in her wildness. She was a wanderess, a drop of free water. She belonged to no man and to no city.” - Roman Payne (“The Wanderess”)

We have all heard it;  some of us have fallen for it;  some of us have denied it;  You are only as old as you feel!  Well, these days, a whole lot of us are feeling 150 years old.  We have fallen into the hardest part of the journey.  Yes, there are some days when physically, we do not feel in our 70s, but do something other than sit on a chair, lay on the couch, get up in the mornings, and we soon remember.  None of us meant to have this happen.  Our body is wearing out; everyone's is.  

Intellectually we might be sharp as tacks and fend off the f'eel-gooders'.  Some us have committed to not go down without a fight.  Emotionally, most of us, if we have surrendered to the aging process as normal, have already had full lives and this is just the calm before the next 'shit-storm'.  A few pains ago, we were still hopeful as heck.  Then, it slowly turns into knee burns, shoulder burns, and hip hurts and we ride it through as best we can and hope for an end to the low pressure weather, the high pressure weather, the hot days where we can hardly breathe, the cold days where we wrap up in layers of comforters.  Spiritually, we think we can do this, most days.  Spiritually, we know we cannot do a danged thing about it and we gape at our gnarling fingers and feet and feel like we will not go through this for long before we give up.  Sometimes, amidst the shadowy world of pain and hopelessness, the sun shines through and we suck to that as if it were a magnet and we were made of iron. 

Somehow, we find those moments of belief that we can do this with dignity and grace.  Next moment a brand new pain appears in a place we did not know we had, and we simply can do nothing but go lie down for a nap.  Most of us try to stay active.  In my case, I forget that I cannot do the whole house in one wide swath in twenty minutes, and I give it a go, only to get half a floor vacuumed and mopped and I am done in. Part of what gives us hope is seeing this as a new journey and we do know the ending and some of us are running (ok, not fast, but walking fast as we can) towards that end.  Some of us are meandering.  Some of us are scraping our heels as life drags us on.  This is the truth of it.

Sometimes you can get your head on straight after a whole block of time of shaking it.  I am grateful to have my art to take a time out without guilt.  Yes, guilt.  We are still the driven generation.  Most of us give into the guilt and sink into light depression.  Most of us can get over it and keep on keeping on.  And, yes, we take pills to do so.  There is a societal shaming for this.  Well, when they hurt as badly as some of us, they will understand.  Sometimes, ok, well, most times, it is quality over everything else.

We learn to cull things in our lives;  past crap, past guilts, past shames, etc.  And we learn, by experience, not to try to balance on ladders, balance on gravel, balance when first standing up.  It sometimes seems like losses outweigh the gains except we need to be proud of ourselves for simply carrying on and getting out of that bed in the mornings to step into the arthritic pain of mornings.  Everything can feel uncertain, and, of course, it is.  We begin to pare down our lives, our bucket lists, our 'things to do'; replacing them with, 'I can do this but not this' lists. We scuff off our old misgivings and fears and regrets because we know, by now, that there is nothing else we can do.  We get rid of things that don't fit (ok, don't go there..my resolution for this year is no body shaming) and we are willing to say we do not have the energy we once had.  We seek to trust things we have learned to trust, people we have learned to trust, and places we feel safe in.  We try to love that/those that have earned our love. We have to really push ourselves to be engaged not enveloped in a bubble of self and aloneness.  We learn to transition and that transitions are not losing, they are changing for something better.  This is a Human Being being a Human Being and we have sailed through life, managing the storms, and coming out grateful or we have come to this part of our journey water-logged and listing.  It was always our choice how the storms affected us.    

If your life does not go as you thought you had planned it, then plan it again and make those changes that make this part of the journey more palatable.  We are not our parents' seventies.  We are not our ancestors' seventies, if they made it that far.  We are not our children's seventies.  We are ours and this is a brand new experience for us.  We will make of it what we make of it.  

I still have some wildness in me.  It shows up, sometimes very unexpectedly, when I do something I thought I could not, should not, would not.  We are all flowers in the gardens, or weeds, but whatever, we are unique and our seventies will be unique to us too.  Be wild, sister-friends; be wild in whatever part of your journey you are on.

©Carol Desjarlais 6.3.19