Threshold

It’s the end of winter, and out here amid farm and woodland it’s a time of visibility. Not of the animal wildlife perhaps, but of the structure. Manmade or deer trod, run by fox or badger, while there’s few leaves and brambles to cover them up it’s easy to see crumbled stone walls and structures, and maybe even older pathways, that simply disappear in the more verdant months.

This feels like a shared experience. I’ve certainly spent the winter facing my own internal paths and structures. Some of them are worth saving, and some quite interesting to take a look at, but honestly most of them have reached the end of their useful life and fully deserve to be retired off to be quietly consumed by the land. That part - much to my relief - does not feel as if it applies to me.

I’ll be 63 in a few weeks. Sixty. Three. I’m not even a little bit of a fan of generational or age group labels [because they’re absolute nonsense] but according to some I am right on the very edge of “middle aged” or, as it’s been dressed up lately, “midlife”. Personally, I think 60-65 is pushing it as the end of midlife, as none of us will make 130, but I am finally feeling the reality of an era shift.

It’s not that I’ve been clinging to my long lost youth or insisting that 60 is the new 40 (it so isn’t, it’s not even the new 50), I have no interest in that. I think visibly ageing is profoundly beautiful in the true sense of the word, not the Male Gaze interpretation. However, I am seeing that a subconscious part of me had simply not read the memo about acknowledging the imminent life change. On some level I was sorta, kinda expecting just to be exactly the same, with maybe a slightly more demanding maintenance plan. Me, but with added kettle bells. This is most certainly not the case.

Change hits hard when you go through menopause (+/- a few years). I’m about eight years on the other side. That experience of becoming a new version of myself felt gradual. Incredibly difficult, but it happened over time. This move into elderhood (I’m attaching no worldly wisdom to that word) feels abrupt. End of a line. Being me, is suddenly and entirely different.

The thing is, whilst I’m clear on what it no longer is, I have little insight into what it will be. This winter, and its clear views of old structures and pathways, has shown me what needs to be left behind, while what’s to come is still in the mist. The last few weeks have felt like a crash course in What To Expect When You’re [Still] Existing.

Because me, I noticed/invented a pattern. The thoughts I was thoughting all began with the letter C, and awareness of this helped me keep going. And because I feel all this is a common experience and my take might help someone get a few steps ahead, I’ll show you…

Choices
I’m not one for regrets but I get close sometimes. Younger me made some spectacularly bad choices. I understand now that I lacked guidance, support, a neurotypical brain, maturity, and an openness to advice. I also had some lousy luck at times. Mostly I just made poor, short-sighted, dopamine-hunting choices. I understand, I don’t regret, but here come the…

Consequences
For decades life felt like an endless feast of choices, and my little in-the-moment self wasn’t hearing the ticking beneath all of them. I’m aware that I just described youth, not a personality flaw, but - and here’s a complimentary c word - Chickens always come home to roost. At this point, we (because I’m married to someone who had a similar decision-making practice) are living with the consequences. We’ve done okay, and we built a life and family we love, relatively late in life but, for example, we are not on solid financial ground by any means. In our 60s. I am, however, now…

Conscious
The wake-up calls tend to avalanche once they start. If you’re around my age, you’ll have your own organ recital to run through, along with noises about assorted joints and hinges that aren’t what they were. A big milestone for me was losing my father, who was 87. To get to 59 with both parents still alive is a blessing denied to many, and I simply had no concept of either of them not being here. Nor of that cranking up of the conveyor belt where, chronologically, I’m now second in line to the big drop. The eldest child of two eldest children. To become suddenly aware of the fact that not only do you not have forever but you don’t necessarily even have very long - and years seem to be rattling past like a bullet train - is sobering. For me, combined with some “health challenges” as we like to call them, this kicked off extreme anxiety. What I’d found, it took me a while to realise, was…

Constraints
All the “too late”s, and the “not now”s and the “not enough”s. I've come across Creative Constraint theory which proposes that (simple version:) limiting choices can kickstart creativity and so be a positive thing. That’s been proven true. But in this context, it seemed like a consolation prize. No thanks. The constraints got me agitated and felt like a straitjacket. The anxiety returned and I had to face that what I was yearning for was…

Certainty
But we can’t know when our time is up, or the shape that the end of this life will take. Personally, I’m a big fan of the Simply Not Waking Up After A Walk On The Beach And A Cracking Good Dinner With My Loved Ones approach. Shocking all who knew me because I was in such great shape and hadn’t had so much as a cold in years. And gosh, look how organised and decluttered my entire life was, making everything exceedingly simple for those who’ll have to tidy up after me.

What???

Fortunately, it hasn’t taken me too long to understand that no amount of, well, anything is going to give me certainty. Nothing I learn, do, eat, lift, earn or believe will give me a time, date and circumstance and for that, I realised, I am grateful. Can you even imagine knowing? I mean, outside the kind of circumstances where a person needs the freedom to decide the moment of their departure. Dunno about you, but I’d lose my tiny, sparkly mind.

Still with me? Good because here’s the happy bit.

I’ve tried to shoehorn in a C word here but it doesn’t work and I don’t care. The sun just came out for the first time in days and it feels like that’s all I need to light the way.

What’s come next, after all that thinking - which may read as depressing but, for me, it actually hasn’t been, is a revelation. Liberation, even. I’d expected to become resigned to some kind of diminished existence that was still nice’n’all, but not the same. As if that’s a bad thing. 

Spoiler alert: it’s not.

I’d been prepping myself to surrender, and accept a loss of experiencing Life. To knowing that choices were gone, and only consequences remained. Some bad, some good, oh well. Instead I found that something new was stirring in me. Something unfamiliar. Mentally, I keep spinning around to catch it, this strange new voice at my shoulder, and I’ve still yet to actually see what it is. I just know that it’s there. New. Possibly, dare I say it, exciting?

What I do feel sure of is that unless I truly leave behind “midlife”, I’m going to really miss out. I’m not middle-aged anymore so I can’t have that, and unless I, oh go on then…

Commit
to trusting the next stage, I won’t have that either. If I commit, despite not knowing what it is I’m signing up for, I have the strongest hunch it may be the best bit yet. Sounds ridiculous, I know. Anything could happen! It could all turn to absolute [let’s go with] Crap but for the first time in my life, I’m ready to close my eyes and jump. Heart pounding.

I should perhaps circle back to...

Choices
If we have them, we are exceptionally lucky. I never forget this. To age is a privilege and I will take whatever it wants to give me. I don’t want to be young. Pain-free would be good but I can manage. I don’t want to have to deal with the insanity aimed at women younger than me, I’d rather be a safe place for them to come to. I want to treasure everything and everyone I still have. I want to explore what Spirit means to me without restraint and protect it. I want to be a fierce, hilarious, loving, splendid old lady. 

I suspect I may have been born for it.