Fuck It I'm 50

I realized this morning that I am compromising this journal and that it is deviating from my original mission. While I have talked generally about my mood, or my sadness, or my happiness, I have not dug down into certain subjects because I have become aware, and sensitive to, and care about my audience. When I first started writing I was amazed at how I could delve into myself and bring up the days truths and ideas and reflections, it was rich and it lasted a while, but this was just the surface, and I realize now that I am censoring things, because people have asked me who I am writing for, because people have been offended, and because people have had lots of conflicting feedback on the different types of writing.

But I started this as a daily reflection on what it is to be 50. And today it feels off course.

I realized this morning that I am not divulging all of the truth that I naively thought I could write about so, and lately I have been focusing on tangential esoteric observations-which is not bad, but is not in line with my mission statement.

And I know you can change mission statements, and I may.

You know that feeling when you get so mad you don’t know what to do with yourself? It is hard to concentrate, you feel like you are marking time with a ticking bomb strapped to your ankle, called your life that is being unlived, and the best you can do is drag the damn thing around with you hoping it doesn’t blow up, or maybe you do hope it blows up, because then you would have the best excuse in the world not to get your life back on track, “Well you see, this bomb I was dragging around blew up and I lost my leg and a part of my…”

I was so mad this morning-my relationship is painful and I can’t really talk about it here or elsewhere. My housing situation is a mess, with dirty, loud and disruptive construction non-stop for five + weeks and what looks to be a handful more to come, while I hemorrhage money to pay for a condo conversion I really don’t care about at this point in my life. And this is underscored by the fact that my downstairs neighbors may force the sale of my flat if I am not able to refinance, which my mortgage broker has already told me I will not qualify for under current lending situations- I would need to be earning a minimum of $65,000 a year to carry the projected debt. My teaching gig at City College is a nightmare and I am deeply afraid that I will go in again on Monday and there will be another head fucking melt down in the lab that the impossible to fire IT staff will smugly refuse to fix it as I stand in front of my class humiliated and making jolly jokes to try to keep their spirits up in this Kafkaesque long running situation comedy. I have just forked out $4,500 on an intense surgery, with more to come, and my mouth still hurts as the bruise on my jaw finally fades. My producing team for my film is not stepping up to the plate. And I am feeling stuck, worried, angry and hog tied by these conspiring circumstances at 50.

Being 50.

Have I written much about being 50? I must say this blog helps, it is a good emotional and intellectual distraction, but at the end of the day I am 50. It is nice, but also equally distressing in the bigger picture, when I tell people I am 50 and they are surprised, I don’t look it, I don’t dress it, I don’t act it. But what is wrong with being 50? Apparently most of us think it is horrifying. It is such a relief to everyone when you don’t seem or look 50, why? My best guess is that most younger people don’t think they will change. They can see death and the end, especially if it is young and not tainted by the aging process. And they are excited when they meet a “young 50”. But what it the real message here.

Death freaks us out.

I could go on and on about what it is to be an aging woman in a youth culture, (note to self, tell the Patti Smith story) but I think once you are here, it is about death.

I am a reminder to young people that aging happens, and with age, if you are healthy and avoid accidents, comes death. It is unimaginable, horrific, unknown and something we, and certainly our culture, does not want to deal with.

But it’s something I want to deal with. I want to do as much as I can before I die and angry days like today don’t move me closer to that goal.