When I was a child, it seemed nearly impossible. As a young adult, it seemed incredibly far away. In my thirties, I still felt like I had forever barring an accident or disease. Today, though, I realize I am closer to the end than I am the beginning. Even while some trick of biology makes me feel like I’m 19 on the inside most of the time, (and it’s often a shock when I look in the mirror and see that I’m not), it can’t do away with the reality of aging.
Our middle is not like our beginning or our end. Our legacy is not in our ourselves, but in how many lives we touched.
Nearer the end, I think it doesn’t matter where we came from, but where we went after we arrived. It doesn’t matter how fat or thin our wallets were, or how thick or thin our thighs were — it matters who we loved and who loved us in return. It doesn’t matter how many accolades we received or how many tragedies we survived, but what real difference either of them made to the world outside of ourselves.
In many ways, I squandered my first 46 years. Not on purpose, but because I couldn’t seem to find a way out of a cycle, no matter how many moves I made or new directions I tried. I often question whether there was any bigger purpose to those accumulated experiences, but when I hear from women who tell me there was, I feel loosened from what otherwise might feel like regret.
I don’t want to squander any more years. Not even days or hours. That’s what I meant when I said in my last post that my 50th year feels urgent-wild . . . We-don’t-have-all-the-time-in-the-world-left wild.
I’ve started to write my second book. My posts will be less frequent and I won’t be online as much, but I hope those of you who found Elephant Girl worthwhile will stick around for part two.
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