If you have read my profile you have perceived this blog has changed from what it was. I have a background in psychology and one in mental illness, though one is much more invasive than the other. I write for a magazine called Everyday Health, and my focus there deals with mental health. I work with families who have a loved one dealing with bipolar disorder, but I also teach basic mental health skills. It is difficult to be healthy, mind and body, in an age where we are moving faster than our little legs can carry us. So I help equip people...From those coping with mental illness and the crisis of mental illness to those just trying to navigate life in the healthiest way possible. As a person who has lived with severe mental illness for the majority of her life, I know what it takes to get healthy mentally. Now, however, after years of working to become healthy, I find myself in pretty good shape and in a whole new set of circumstances. It is a new day for me.
I met my husband, Chris, when I was a child. We were in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade. We attended the same church, rode the same school bus, and later, graduated from the same high school. We were never friends. I remember him from that time, vaguely, and he remembers me, but we never ran in the same circles. Our paths crossed continually. We knew the same people, and yet, we never connected.
Fast forward through many years of mental illness and broken relationships for me, a marriage, divorce, and two children for him, and we arrive at two years ago (albeit through many big leaps). Two years ago he found me on Facebook. Good old Facebook. He began to read the blogs I wrote for Everyday Health, and we become good friends through discussions about mental health, God, and life in general. At the time he was in a relationship, and so was I, but over the next couple of years we were to see both those relationships dissolve, leaving us alone on the stage with our really great friendship.
We began to spend a bit more time chatting and texting, until one day we decided we wanted to make a bit more of a commitment. We started video Skyping, and made an effort to actually spend time together in the same physical location. He came to see me, and it was after that that we knew we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together. From there things moved quickly. Trips back and forth were expensive, and we were tired of being apart. We decided we wanted to get married, so we set a date for late July, but in April, when I took a load of stuff down to drop off, we decided to just elope. It was a logical or realistic solution to the expense an separation that had been too big a factor in our situation.
Now, I am a psychologist, so I am not one who does not consider ramifications of actions. I knew the adjustment would be huge, but I also tend to act when I know what I want, as does Chris. I figured we would just work through things one day at a time. I knew the boys would have quite and adjustment, as would Chris. I knew I would struggle, having left my home, way of life, and my cat (the new men in my life are allergic to cats). I knew it would all be a major adjustment, but I had no idea just how much it would really impact me.
You see, I have been single my whole life...That's 40 years for anyone who may have missed the blog title. I have had lots of relationships (most of them crap), and have been engaged several times. But I have never been married. I have done what I wanted, when I wanted to. I have not worried about giving account of my spending habits, and I have not had to pick up so many pairs of socks and wet towels up from off the floor in my life! I would love to say I am gracious and adaptable, but truthfully, I am not very flexible. I am middle aged!
I say that more as a reminder to myself that I am the age I am than to anyone else. I am just always amazed when I read my birth date on my driver's license. And when I see people on the street I find I'm easily confused when I am asked to assess how old I think a particular person might be. Actually, I'm nonplussed, because I really can't tell how old I look or feel most of the time, and I compare others' ages to my own. When I lived in my hometown I would see women I went to high school with and ask my mom, "Do I really look as old as she does?" My mom rarely commented...Why is that?
So how does one reconcile with where he or she is at in life? It is not that I am discontented. On the contrary...I am overwhelmed! I have all these lovely things, things I always wanted (though my husband may not appreciate being called a thing), but they didn't quite show up the way I expected them to.
Ever see the move "Under the Tuscan Sun"? Francis is a woman on the edge after buying a large house to fill with things like a wedding, a family, and babies, but finding she is alone in it instead. At the end of the movie, through a series of events (of course), her friend points our to her that she got all the things she asked for...There is a wedding taking place in her house. Her best friend is there with her baby, and there is a large mass of friends who have become Francis' family. She acknowledges that she did get all she asked for. It just didn't happen the way she expected.
For me, the story is poignant. I expected to get married, but in my twenties, not at 40. I expected to have children, but to give birth to them not have them inserted into my life at 11 and 17. I expected to have an education, but to not be financially stagnant while finishing a doctorate...
So, I am revamping. I am reassessing. I am reviving. Life never goes the way we plan does it? For some that's a good thing, and for some it's not so good. For some life tends to change because of the choices of others, and, frankly, it is bloody unfair. I have things I would have preferred to be different. But I do not have yesterday any longer. It is over...done. And though vestiges still sometimes cling to me in today, like yesterday's dust on today's mantle, I refuse to be stifled by what I missed, the time spent, and what didn't go right. I wouldn't trade the option of having the rest of my life with my husband for any day in my twenties. And quite honestly, I like myself much better at 40 than 20...and I think he would too.
So here is to revitalizing, reevaluating, and reinventing...The new 20 :)
L
Tags: marriage after 40
the new 20
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