Lost

It wasn't a coincidence that I named my blog "Windlost". That idea, of being lost, being blown about in the wind perhaps, of being not entirely "found" always appealed to me. It summed up a lot of my interior world, an ever-present feeling of sadness, and not fitting in, and of something being missing, which has always been present in my life. Something missing has always been present, as funny as that sounds. I don't know why, but I carry sadness around me. I am a serious person, a deep thinker, a worrier. I mull and ruminate, and consider things, and think about myself and why I am the way I am, and I am hyperconscious and always trying to grow and improve and be a better me. It is exhausting.
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I am a perfectionist too, and I want to be many things that I am not, and the harder I try to achieve them, the more I realize that we cannot push ourselves to be who we are not. No matter how much we might want it, we cannot will a new life. As much as Oprah or "The Secret" says differently. Life is preparation, years of hard work. It isn't wanting. Wanting isn't enough. You need to set all the cards in the right order, that is assuming you possess all the cards in the first place. You need to have an idea of what you want too, to know which cards you might need. And then you need to scabble about to find the cards you need to get you where you think you might want to be, only to find out when you finally get all your ducks in a row that you don't even like what you thought you liked, and want to be someone different. Then it takes 10 years to become that other person, and we run out of time. So we compromise. We take the best we can find of what is available and make the best of it.
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And if we are lucky, our "chosen" life (i.e. mostly accidental life) is bearable. And our boss doesn't take it all away by firing us. And our husband doesn't take it all away by walking out on us, or we don't take it all away from ourselves by falling in love with a stranger, perhaps. And our kids don't turn their backs on us when we are old and decide they never want to see us again, and don't bother to visit us in the old folks home. In a perfect world, we make perfect decisions, have a perfect house and husband to go with it, and beautiful smart kids who don't exhaust us with special needs. We have fulfilling jobs and we volunteer and are lauded as successes in our community. We are surrounded by people who love us. Who need us. Who make us feel valuable, every single day. We are cared for and phoned. We have meaning to our days, if it is even to feed a warm meal to our families.
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And if we are lucky, we find hobbies and side-interests that are glorious and don't make us feel inept and useless. We learn how to sew or scrapbook, or write, or take photos, or bake, or something that makes us happy with ourselves and makes people admire us, if we are lucky. If we are lucky we also find friends who really care about what we have to say, and who say nice things about us when we aren't around. And if we are lucky, we also figure out how to be thin and beautiful, which is what a woman is supposed to be (she says, sarcastically), and make it look effortless. We learn how to starve ourselves and not feel deprived, and somehow contort it into something that gives us power instead of what it really does...which is make us into mindless conforming pathetic machines. The worth of a woman is not in the size of her body. Yet why can't I will myself to feel good about myself? Because a thousand advertisements a day tell me I am a failure, that's why, because I am over 20 and no longer have the body of an adolescent. It's a crime, what we women put ourselves through, what the world holds up as a standard for us. It is an even bigger crime that clothing seems only to be cut for teenagers. But that is clearly our fault, and we add the guilt onto our pile as well.
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Oh, and it's also a crime to get older. How could we let ourselves go by ageing? Time for Botox, or anything to hide the mortal sin (for a woman, anyway) of getting older.
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The reality is that life sucks, and we are lucky if we can manage to live in a positive-thinking little dream world. If we are lucky, we have three or four people to love, and who love us. If we are lucky, we have a face we love or a body we love, but not both (and often neither). We usually always feel guilty about not being thin enough, or young enough, or stylish enough. We don't want to go on holidays because we need 6 months to prepare for a bathing suit. We are reliant on husbands who if we are luckly are amazing, but who usually aren't half the people we are. If we have our own jobs, chances are we hate them or something about them. We hate meetings or whining customers or having to be a corporate butt-licker over-achiever all the time. We just want to do our job and be left alone. We hate the politics or our office or our boss or usually our colleagues. We work harder and someone else gets the credit. We don't get the raises we deserve. And there is always someone at the office who is smug and who climbs the ladder and who we'd like to strangle in the bathroom, or at least kick in the pants.
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And if you are blessed to love your job, chances are you are single or a failure in your personal life, since these are one in the same (I know, I was single a long time and it was like being the Scarlet Woman). Perhaps you are a jealous person, or a control freak, or manipulative, or passive-agressive, or emotionally closed, or maybe you avoid conflict. Chances are you have some personality deficit that your willing partner is only too happy to point out, again and again and again. Over time, you work on these things, one failed relationship after the next, until you work through all your demons, only to find that finally you are in a happy relationship after all. You are perfect. Except of course, you don't recognize yourself, because every shred of who you are is now hidden and fixed and silent.
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Life is complicated. My life is complicated. It looks easy from the outside but it isn't. I don't enjoy my job, and I miss my family, who are all very far away. I am no longer in the great shape I always was and don't know how to re-motivate myself. I worry about the future. I worry about money, children, what decisions one should make in life. I wonder how I will find work that I love which pays a big salary and has a nice pension. I can't find a path, so I realize I am stuck doing what I am doing for the next 30 years and it eats my soul. People think if you make a lot of money, you are happy. I think that if your work is rewarding, you are happy. Money is secondary. Yes, I can buy everything I want, loosely speaking, but I feel miserable sitting at my desk, with my soul slowly eroding.
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And home life isn't always easier. My partner and I have a remarkably good and sweet relationship, and we are luckily pretty evolved, but we have our issues. We have places where we need to do work. There are always gaps in how much love you feel you deserve and how much you get. It ebbs and flows. Sometimes you feel needed, sometimes you don't think anyone would notice if you disappeared.
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I also have chronic headaches and have a hard time keeping my medications working at a comfortable level. It is always up and down, bad weeks and good, nights of insomnia and days of wanting to sleep all day. Lately I just want to sleep. A new drug keeps me up all night but another sedates me, so I lie in bed all night physically exhausted while my mind races. I got to work and try to be productive but all I want is to escape into about 72 hours of sleep, from which I re-emerge refreshed and without a headache. In 2007, there was never one single day that I didn't have a headache of some level. The small breaks I get come in hours, not days. I have problems with my body's pain management system and have developed a fibromyalgia-like syndrome where my body sometimes aches so badly it is unbearable. I have chronic neck and back pain to add to the mix. My doctors call it fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue or hyper-sensitive this or that, but my chemistry is out of whack and I can't get it under control. I hurt all over. And I work 40 hours a week, still.
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It is hard to transform your life, take courses, excel at the office, be a better person, be a better lover, daughter, friend, and run marathons and be a perky little girlie girl when you feel like this every day. When you are so spiritually worn down from physical pain. The pain becomes intrinsic at a point, sewn like a fine thread into the fabric of your being. You walk around a shadow of who you were.
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Even without pain, life is hard. There is always something that needs fixing. Or maybe it is only me who's having an identity crisis right now. A crisis of confidence. It's been coming for a while, this existential who-am-I-supposed-to-be and what-am-I-supposed-to-do-with-my life crisis. We all hit these walls. If we are lucky the feelings last minutes, hours, days. We yell at our kids, we cry in traffic, we are rude to a sales clerk, but we get over it. For me, it has been building and building and I am not getting over it. Accumulation. It feels like the top will blow off me. Or I will throw my monitor out my 5th floor office window. God, that would feel A M A Z I N G!
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But in the end, there is no quick fix. No monitors out the window, unfortunately. Real, serious life change takes years. I remember reading a quote that when you want to master a new thing, to give yourself a good four years to do it. You need to choose a limited number of these things, because you can't be good at everything. I am trying to choose my things, to find something that might make me happy. Half the battle would be to figure out what it is I am meant to do. And lose that 15lbs I gained since meeting David (he's a good cook).
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In the meantime, I go to a job I hate, in pants that are too tight, riding a train with fellow zombies all of whom I hate for one reason or another (mostly that I have to be forced next to them at the beginning and end of my days, when I am most vulnerable). My skin is peeling and red and I am full of winter static and my hair is flat and I feel pudgy and I don't like any of the books I'm reading and all my clothes are ugly. I want the world to stop, so I can get off for a while.
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I want to go home for a month and visit my Mom, and stay with her while she gets used to living alone, while she adapts to seeing her husband adjust to life in a nursing home. I want to visit him and just be there with him too, because he is sad and lonely but slowly adapting. Mom says it is One Day At A Time. AA was right. This is an excellent life philosophy. Mom and Dad are both afraid and in pain. She is lost, very sad. His family has done almost nothing for him or her in years, but at least they are visiting him now. Mom bore his care all alone for so long. It is like she is shell-shocked right now, that he is gone. I want to go home and be with them, where I should be, fulfilling some role I understand...that of daughter.
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But I can't take off that much time. So I am left here in my empty life, when I am needed elsewhere. I have David to love, which sometimes feels like the only good part. I love my parents and have a great relationship with my Mom. I have an adorable cat. I have you. But I am still feeling lost and empty. And I have nothing interesting to say about decorating either.
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I know I will find my way through. It is hard being lost, and not knowing how to get yourself unlost. I know all the things I love. I know what I adore. But I don't know how to transform my life into becoming and possessing and engaging those things. How do I become new again? A fresh, shiny new me? How do I get un-stuck? Un-lost? Sadly, buying new dishes is not enough.