When I was 22, I had a vague view of my future, but if I was struggling, there were five things I was sure of. I wanted to be an artist. I probably wanted to marry a fellow artist. I wanted at least two children. I wanted to live in Brooklyn for the rest of the day with my family and college friends. I wanted to own a house in Catskill, where my family can gather every summer.
What of these five things happened? One. 1! I’m certainly an artist.
But left?
Actor I was in my 20s – was my boyfriend sure I was going to get married? We both broke up when we were 33. I married my husband at 34, and he is definitely not an artist. Marriage to him meant leaving Brooklyn, moving to Europe, then moving to Los Angeles.
The two kids I wanted? I only got one, and this was one of the biggest heartbreak and joys of my life.
Catskill’s house? I think I can continue to dream.
There are so many other things that are not planned. My marriage is more complicated than “I” like most. I’m not always happy with how much I’ve been running in my career. I live in LA, so I spend a lot of my life in the car. My elderly parents and most of my oldest friends live on the continent.
They are difficult, but there are many unexpectedly great things. My daughter and I are as close as a mother-daughter pair can do because She is the only one. My husband, who turned to my left, has a stable job that allows me to be free to become an artist. By moving to LA, we have been living within an hour of our sister for the first time since childhood. My family has found a community of friends on the West Coast, which has been the foundation of our lives for the past decade.
It’s a wonderful life I love. And also, sometimes I really hate it.
****
Last morning I was surprised to see therapist about this, how sad it was to surprise me with so many parts of my life, and how grateful I am for so many things.
She stopped me. “Middle-aged,” she said, “holding the opposite tension.”
hang on, what?
It was one of those moments of treatment when you had to stop and take it in.
Middle-aged people are to keep the opposite tension.
Unlike in your 20s, it’s about getting a job, dating, building a career and family, building a family, traveling, doing good in the world. For most of us, it’s a lot that we are happy with, and there are lots of things that we are shocked or disappointed. Perhaps the marriage was over or we could not have children. Perhaps our parents got sick. Maybe we’ve fallen into an unexpected career that turned out to be a great deal of satisfaction for us. Perhaps our second marriage is much better than our first marriage!
At this stage in life, she explains and reconciliates with us thinking about how our lives actually go and how our lives go.
My great therapist point: I won’t get around this. Welcome to Midlife.
Of course, this can be difficult to achieve, but it also offers a very small limp. It was one of the refreshing things my therapist told me when he was going to hold the light, and the darkness had to be done with small things, not big.
“You’ll miss him when he’s gone, and you won’t miss him when he’s gone,” she said.
Both are fine! Well, if that’s not the motto for living in middle-aged people, I don’t know what.
Abigail Rasminsky is a Los Angeles-based author and editor. She teaches creative writing at USC’s Cuck School of School and writes her weekly newsletter. People + Body. She also writes for Jo Cup on many topics, including marriage, Preteens, menopause, and only child.
How do PS enjoy the empty nest, nine readers comment on aging and describe themselves in five words?
(Photos of Tina Fay and Amy Poehler from Amy’s podcast nice. )
Source: Cup of Jo – cupofjo.com
