Have you ever felt like you can’t breathe, because you feel stifled by your life, the one that you worked so hard to build, the one that you prayed for and that you’re so freaking grateful for, but sometimes… it is just a lot. It’s hard to explain, because you love your life and you know how lucky you are, and still…sometimes you just want to get away from it all. But you can’t just pick up and leave, because you still have to pick up your kids from school, because they still have practice and coding class. You still have to take the dog out for his walk. Also, you don’t want to leave it all behind, you don’t want to let anyone down, and you don’t mean to complain, because you don’t want to be an ungrateful bitch. But sometimes… you just need to not be responsible for anything. You just need to be free, for just a little.
These are the feelings that I sometimes have, that I was shocked to find articulated so beautifully in the book I just finished reading, I Miss You When I Blink by Mary Laura Philpott. It’s like the author reached into my brain and saw the hazy fog of my dissatisfaction and irritability, validated it and gave it a name (“mid-life existentialism”), and then packaged it up neatly into funny, relatable, bite-size essays for me to digest on my own time. As a side note, what a deceptive title. I thought that the title was a sappy trope directed at her kids about how much she misses them even when she blinks for a second. Like… how unrelatable is that? But it turns out that that’s not it. “I miss you when I blink” is an inward-directed mantra, as in, I miss my past/younger selves and the alternate or future versions of myself; or, I am missing the present moment because I am too distracted by my anxious inner monologue. It’s saying, stay here. Be here. Blink and you’ll miss it.
I am coming to a new understanding of what the Year of 40 project was to me. It was not just looking for hobbies to pass the time. It was a way to take small steps towards exploring different versions of myself. It’s a little embarrassing to admit that I have wondered about picking up a guitar and trying on a “singer-songwriter” persona. What would it be like to be that person, and could I be her and still be me and get to keep my current life? What if I worked out so much that I became the fittest version of myself and then became a personal trainer to help others? Would I find some deep fulfillment in one of these hobbies, the “answer” that fills the void and lack of purpose and identity beyond being a mom? I think that is what I was hoping for deep down. Did I find it? I think not. I cannot be all these versions of myself without changing anything about my current life, just as I can’t magically create any more hours in the day. Admittedly though, I am still looking for the “answer” and I am still in the middle of it. Being in the middle of something doesn’t give you the advantage or clarity of hindsight.