A Whinge about Mid-life
because sometimes you have to have a little moan...
I'm not trying to be bleak, but let's get real here. If you are in your forties or thereabouts, life is a bit pedestrian at this point, am I right? The gloss of youthful optimism has faded to a dull, rather tired matt finish.
You're going to work, raising kids, paying a mortgage and bills, and spending your free time cleaning a house you don't own and pulling what feels like the same weed out of the same spot in a garden you may or may not give two figs about.
And the errands! Why are there so many errands? I feel like I constantly have a list of boring things to do. I find myself streamlining my errands into a 6-part to-do list that I optimistically intend "to-do" in one morning, but after ticking off 3 things and stopping the car 3 times, I just can't face it anymore. I can't look for another carpark, walk into another shop, find whatever the darned thing is, pay for it, and then spend more time remembering where I parked. So, I find myself driving into the Bunnings carpark, circling around and driving straight back out again. It can't be just me who does this??
And this day-to-day mundane existence just rinses and repeats. Again and again and again.
None of this is BAD per se, but it isn't exactly FUN either. And that's not to say there is zero fun, there's just not exactly a whole heap of fun, and when there is fun, you are pretty much responsible for MAKING it fun. And I don't know about you, but when I was younger, fun seemed to be a fairly organic process, rather than... well, whatever this is.
And I feel GRATEFUL to have my mundane existence. I DO! The alternative is pretty dark and as someone who has lost people far too young, I GET that this is life and growing older is a privilege.
But can I just put down the gratitude for a moment and have a good old-fashioned whinge? I mean, I'm already mid-whinge, so I may as well keep going... right?
The thing is, I think this might be the hardest time of my life. And I mean in general - harder things have happened, I've experienced worse moments and events, but in terms of an ongoing sort of bland blahness, this is next-level BLAH!
Last year we bought theme park passes for a year of fun at Movie World, Sea World and Wet n' Wild. I was so excited! I used to love rollercoasters, spinning things and general wild fun - this was going to be a GREAT year! Guess what I discovered? My inner ear is OLD now so these days instead of wild rides, I get a wild dose of motion sickness. WTF!
Gone are the insightful conversations with a group of friends where we philosophically solve the world's problems late into the night over a glass of wine. Not only would I be rendered useless for DAYS if I dared to indulge in such a way, but my conversations these days revolve around more pedestrian things like how to pack the dishwasher.
In fact, that was the subject of the world's most boring fight I had with my partner recently. He was explaining why he thought we should separate the cutlery in the dishwasher into knives, forks etc. It was a simple change that would make it easier to unload the dishwasher. I got it. Great idea! Beautiful.
But I'd already packed the dishwasher and let me tell you, there was no part of me that wanted to pack the thing in the first place, let alone re-pack it. I felt my irritation rising, rising, RISING! Because the thing is, I don't want to THINK about the dishwasher. Ever. I definitely don't want to TALK about the dishwasher. And I absolutely without any shadow of a doubt, do NOT want to FIGHT about the damned dishwasher! (It hasn't escaped my attention that I am currently WRITING about the bloody dishwasher!)
These kinds of conversations/fights are my own little private hell. Surely, I can't be the only one.
To be fair to ye old mid-life, there were a few warnings that maybe this stage of life might not be a light-hearted frolic in the park. I mean you've got your mid-life crisis; you've got perimenopause; you've got memories of your dad kneeling on the ground for a few beats longer than necessary as he worked out how to get into an upright position. I mean, there were warnings. But we were young and carefree and surely, surely that would never happen to us, right?
But it is! And I definitely know my aging body, that used to be able to sit in an office chair all week then smash out a day in the garden, now has a 50/50 chance of breaking and I never know which lucky body part will win that lottery and I never know when. What I do know is there will be a twinge, tweak, strain, pull or ache somewhere at some point.
And that brings me to self-care. When I was younger, I don't think the term 'self-care' had ever occurred to me. I just flagrantly and with self-absorbed abandon cared for, well... me! These days self-care is a whole extra thing I have to find time for and most of the time I don't wanna!
I know precisely what I need to do to stem the advancing tide of aging to make sure I age in the best way possible. I can't escape the knowledge: it must be constantly loitering on the edge of all my algo rhythms because I just need to cough-wee and my Facebook starts veritably spitting video ads at me of fit older women usually in a squat position asking me personal questions about my pelvic floor.
But there's so much self-care I'm supposed to do that I'm already exhausted!
Let's look at what an ideal day in the life of an aging woman looks like:
Healthy meals with as much protein and fibre as you can squash in. And calcium because God-forbid we forget about our bone health.
A strength training session because our bodies are losing muscle mass and we will definitely have a terrible old age if our muscles shrivel and die.
A mobility session because if you want to be able to pick something off the floor, or I don't know, swing a leg out of a car, you must stay mobile.
Pelvic floor exercises: see cough-wee above.
Meditation because our brains are slowly dying and meditation has dozens of benefits for an aging brain (it seriously does, and I'd recommend going and reading about it so you too can feel like crap that you're not squeezing it into your day).
Taking care of our mental health because women 40-65 are more at risk at that time of life than at any other age.
Aaah mid-life, the gift that keeps on giving, no wait, that's not right, it's more like the gift you receive, and then subtly check if the receipt is lying around so you can return it because what you really need is money to do something utterly boring like pay a bill.
Anyway, now that I've utterly depressed you (but also hopefully made you feel like you're not alone), I need to go and walk the dog, clean the kitchen... again, mop the floors... again (who am I kidding, I barely mop), scrape poo stains off the toilet that are definitely not mine, feed the kid... again, and somehow find the energy to tolerate my partner.
