I feel sad on the inside of my skin. This line and its associated sensation resurface in me from time to time, never leaving me fully in a state of contentment. Today things feel particularly vulnerable.
Workdays and my boss keep me chronically stressed alongside the swell of debt we’re continuously trying to doggy paddle out of. My toddler remains a challenge that taxes me deeply even as he delights, and three years after his birth, my body still refuses to budge in the direction of trim and toned. My relationship with my parents teeters on the precipice without a clear understanding of just how far the landing lies, or if it’s even possible. I’m tired of treading water.
I raise the stakes, raise the optimism like a veil I can see right through. It’s my attempt to reframe and see my life through the lens of love and gratitude. It feels, though, like I’m squeezing glitter glue into the folds of my fears and insecurities to kintsugi myself into a vessel better suited for holding joy and beauty.
These glittering fractures formed under the constant pressure to be happier, slimmer, more polished, to make more money, be a sweeter wife and stronger leader, to be a more nurturing mother and more accommodating daughter and sister, to live in a cleaner house with nicer furniture, to have just done something worthy of dinner party fodder. But how is it possible to be all of that?
Is it truly for me or for the long-held expectations for a life well-lived? Maybe I’ve trekked after the wrong things and worn myself out in the process. Realistically I don’t know how to seek the alternative. There are still bills to pay, a job to do, kids to tend. I don’t know what an upended life looks like at this point stripped from the cliche of midlife crisis. A plunge into dark waters without knowing how long I can hold my breath only to emerge on the other side of that body of water with a renewed sense of myself and vision for the future.
These past few years have been sunk in this dark eddy, and I’ve been fraying at the edges, raging under the silent gaze, through this smiling depression that fails to dissolve.
It’s why I journey after predictable markers of success. I see that now. They seemed like the answer, but I was asking the wrong questions. I’ve been seduced by the pitch of satisfaction and somehow gotten so much of it wrong. I ruminate and hold out for answers that don’t come readily. At 39, I struggle to view the next decade with the surety I crave. The clock ticks louder on the countdown to 40 in my determination to reassess and realign.
I’ll claim those valleys and dark pools, peer over the cliff side, trudge mind-numbing miles if it means I will learn how to walk looking upward and outward rather than down or over my shoulder. I long to see the shape of clouds in honeyed sunlight and notice flowers bursting from cracks in the cement.
I’ve been stuck in the illusion of forward momentum that has turned out to be a Gravitron at the funfair. I need to get off, get unstuck. How to begin? How do I know which soft bit of land to place my first step? I sense the answer is there if I can believe in my ability to see differently. While it’s terrifying to feel like I can’t shake the sadness and underwhelm, this air here has grown stale.
Throwing myself at the idea that it’s all about changing perspective, I’m going to take a page from my toddler’s playbook. I’m going to go sit out on the deck, lick a popsicle, and stare at the rustling trees and blue expanse of sky. I’m going to try something new and then compliment myself as he does with an emphatic, “I was so brave!”
Gabrielle Koontz 