Last year around this time I was pretty bummed out about turning 49, and I obsessively worried about what this BIG birthday year would bring - 2005 would be the BIG 5-0 birthday - and I was worrying about it a full year ahead of time. Okay, I am not always normal, or cool, calm and collected and I am - or was - a big worrier. Give me something to worry about, and I will do it with style and aplomb most can't even muster. I think that's a result of assorted "family of origin" issues, but I digress... Anyway,  I dreaded turning 50 and thought I was old. I was going to be 50? How the HELL did that happen? I still was a kid! I still was figuring out what I wanted to be when I grew up! Hey, wait! I am a grownup! Where, oh where, did the time go?? I was perplexed.

I had heard or read that for women turning 50 is a "wonderful time of transition..a time of new growth...new opportunities for change...a new level of confidence..." Meanwhile, I thought whoever wrote or said that was totally NUTS and needed to be institutionalized. I DIDN'T feel THAT WAY. I thought my life was over. I had no dreams or visions for my future at all, and couldn't even think of them, which was kind of sad given that I have an active, intelligent mind and ALWAYS could visualize my future before. I was STUCK and immobilized inside my heart and spirit.  It was like my brain flatlined and was blank. I thought my life would continue to be one big, fat, boring routinized existence like it already seemed to be.....get up, make coffee, feed the cats, shower and dress for work, drive to work, deal with the maniacs and the bullshit at work, leave, drive home and deal with the maniacal head cases on the road who drive 95 miles an hour in the SLOW lane (and who, in my humble opinion REALLY NEED THERAPY FOR ROAD RAGE -especially in NYC- and REALLY need to go back to driver's ed because they scare the daylights out of ME!), make dinner, feed cats, pay some meager attention to hubby (which I felt hugely guilty about since he is so amazing!), and then, HIT THE SACK and start all over again. I felt drained, sapped, exhausted. I kept asking ,"Is this all there IS to life?" Ugh.

One day, while sitting in front of my computer crying, I was so depressed I really wanted to end my life. Sounds dramatic, I know, but at the time I was feeling decidedly dramatic, bored, sad, confused and all the rest that goes in between. I thought of my mother whose life ended from lung and bone cancer at the age of 52, and I wondered how she felt at this age, before her cancer was revealed. I wondered if she felt as confused and despondent by it all as I did, and I was frustrated that those answers would never come. I hated everything and everyone, especially me.

My body was changing, too. Because Mom has been dead for 30 years and my aunt, Mom's sister, is dead as well, I really had NO ONE with whom I could question the physical realities of perimenopause and menopause. My sister, who is my dad's daughter from his first marriage, sailed through it and had no symptoms when she went through the change. Meanwhile, I already had anxiety and panic issues  (which started about 7 years ago but have all but subsided now thanks to sheer hard work and willpower on my part), and I was pissed off that my passage would be like this...anxiety ridden. Meanwhile, I still get my period regularly...I was confused by being in between perimenopause and menpause.

Though I am gifted with looking younger by a good 10-15 years than I actually am, I started noticing the subtle changes that come with age. Though I am still somewhat slender, things have drooped or sagged a bit and I am not as slim or toned as I once was. Exercising would help of course, but I couldn't motivate myself to do it, and I just put it off like I do with most things that have to do with health (including quitting smoking, which is a whole other ball of wax that  I personally should KNOW better than to do in light of my mother's death from lung cancer). The white hair I started to get at 21 was moving further across my scalp. I actually liked it though, but I could see it making its mark more so than before.

I think what bothered me most was that I had no energy and I was tired. I started getting more an more aches and pains, courtesy of the fibromyalgia I was diagnosed with about 6 years ago, and the terrible knee arthritis I was diagnosed with (in both knees) in July. I was tired and drained almost all the time and couldn't STAND IT. I have always been an active person --I typified the image of the consummate New Yorker --walk fast, talk fast...run, run run! Go! Go! Go! And yet, I was dragging my tushy behind...feeling like a turtle or a snail...trudging along...lumbering s-l-o-w-l-y.  It drove me nuts. I felt like a shadow of my old self. And soooo, I was depressed and forlorn for that which was....  

Here I had it ALL --a wonderful 2nd hubby, Dream, who is my biggest fan and cheerleader and who pushes me to press onwards when I get down in the dumps; I have an important job and make decent money; a loving family, lots of dear friends, and 8 cats who are wonderful..annoying at times, but truly dear to me..., I have a gorgeous home I love, and despite some terrible tragedies and misfortunes in my life, I HAVE SURVIVED...I lived to tell the tales.

And yet, I felt I had nothing. A sad thought, I realize now, and so untrue.

One day last summer......actually it was June 3rd and it was the 30th Anniversary of my Mom's death, and also happened to be our college's commencement day (and for which I am in charge of all logistics).... the blackness lifted from my heart and soul, and I started to sing again, (inside of myself) like a glorious songbird. The blackness in my heart had turned to gorgeous, golden sunlight. I realized that I had survived both Mom and Dad's deaths (which occurred 5 years after Mom's), and that I had accomplished most of what I had set out to do so many years ago. While I had not gone into the arts to be a painter/illustrator as I had planned, I had managed to become an accomplished and successful administrator at a college in NYC, coordinating huge college events AND television and movie shoots with competence and intelligence. I had lived through terrible fertility issues and come to accept that it was okay I didn't have kids --I could "mother" others as I always had done, and could still fulfill my maternal instincts by doing that. I had survived a divorce from my first husband and learned to thank HIM for the years we had together; for the things he taught me during our marriage, and I could forgive him and me for all that went wrong. I could send him off into his new life with a new wife and wish him well, as I always will do. Being with him enabled me to meet my darling 2nd husband, Dream, a man I never would have met had I not traversed the rocky roads of my first marriage or the pain of the divorce I had initiated. Being with Dream is a shining light in my life, and I feel blessed.

I have had failures both personally and professionally, and yet I stood up after failing, dusted myself off and learned to keep moving forward. I've lost close friends due to unresolved issues and problems I chose to ignore during the friendship, and it's okay really, I have finally come to realize. Letting go of them and their toxicity has freed me and given me a voice I didn't know I had. I am alive for the first time.

So now I GET IT..50 IS a wonderful time of transition for women...it is a blessing and not a curse as I had thought before...It is a gift and a treasure.

What I can say now in all honesty is this:

TURNING 50 IS A CHANCE WHEN WE CAN REALLY "OWN" OURSELVES AND BE WHO WE WERE FULLY INTENDED TO BE IN ALL OUR MYRIAD MYSTERIES AND BEAUTY.

Now, isn't that amazing? I think so, and I am loving it. 

Back later.... 

Soooooooooooooooooo happy to hear from you Pina... I really understand how you feel, I am still a little girl inside and I know 50 will be here for me eventually and I will be asking the same questions.Right now I feel like I have been stuck at 34 forever...don't know why...lol.
I was begining to wonder if you were coming back....I have suprised myself by sticking to this journal for so long myself and now Hubby has his too which at first was a worry but now I am a little more comfy with it...lol.I had to stop the whining about him and I am happy about that...there is more to my life than arguments...lol. Anyway Pina...huge hugs back at you and another for Dream Dragon I will be back soon...