 I love writing this little blog. I do. It’s a safe forum that allows me to speak my truth. I can share my hopes, dreams and successes; failures, frustrations and fuckups; and random, silly anecdotes about my first-world life.
I am not ashamed of anything I’ve said or done in my lifetime, so there’s no ego involved when I write. I have made peace with all my decisions, and I have no regrets. I’ve been schooled on some amazing lessons I couldn’t have learned without wading through a lot of shit. I hope that sharing some of those lessons will keep others from making the same mistakes. Thanks to 12-step recovery, I’ve also learned that other people’s shit does not stick to me. If people I love make bad choices, that’s on them. I’m not going to waste time agonizing over those choices or being humiliated on their behalf. But, because this blog is public and attached to my professional website, I hesitate to go too far off the chain with intimate details. I’m reticent to post anything too raw or controversial because I don’t want to alienate my clients, family or friends.
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 Bwock bwock bwock-ock!
I admit it. I can be a big chicken. Now, I don’t think I have any true phobias. Nothing paralyzes me from participating in day-to-day activities. I don’t like spiders, but if one of those little sons of bitches shows up in my house, I have no problem grabbing a wad of Kleenex and smooshing the sucker. I experience dizziness that borders on vertigo at the top of a skyscraper, but that didn’t stop me from visiting the observation decks of the John Hancock Center and the Sears Tower (renamed Willis Tower in 2009) in Chicago with my son while on vacation there 10 years ago. Air travel makes me nauseous, but I just take a happy pill and get on the plane anyway. And I’ve had an irrational fear of dying in a car crash ever since my parents were involved in a drunk driving accident in the late 1970s, but I still get in my car every damn day. And sure, I experience many common, human fears — fear of failure, fear of disappointing others, fear of not being enough, financial fear, etc. — but I push through them. What’s that saying about courage? Being scared shitless and getting the job done anyway? Yeah, that.  I have discovered that, since I celebrated the milestone almost two years ago, 40 truly is the magic age when your body starts waging a Sandinista-style rebellion.
Oblivious to the damage you’re doing to yourself in your youth and all the time-tested literature on the natural effects of aging, you dismiss the warnings of your parents and middle-aged friends, thinking, “I’ll be fine until WAY into my 50s.” And then 40 sneaks up on you like a kitten under the covers at 3 a.m. Forty has TEETH, man. Your skin suddenly says nuh-uh to collagen production and yes to saggy jowls and eye wrinkles. Your stomach starts screaming “Hell to the no!” when you dare to eat anything greasy or (burp) spicy. And your metabolism says, “Fuck you, that tiny piece of carrot cake WILL go straight to your ass if you don’t get up off of it right this minute and kick the shit out of those calories at the gym.”  I am no fashionista, but I love clothes, shoes, purses, jewelry and all the accoutrements of being a girl. I probably have 50 pairs of shoes, 20 purses and enough clothes that I have to switch out my closets every season because I don’t have adequate space to display all of them at once. Thank God for plastic storage bins.
These days, I wear clothes that are both comfortable and complement my body. I like to look nice on occasion, but gone are the days of misery for the sake of fashion. If an article of clothing is too tight, itchy, bulky or constricting — or if I have to iron it — I won’t wear it. All but two of my business suits have been retired, and I only wear them at media events. Nice jeans and a cute top work for nearly any outing in the current manifestation of my life, work or otherwise.  As I sat down to write this on Sunday evening, I was really flippin’ ticked off.
I don’t make a statement like that very often these days. For one, I rarely feel that way. About anything. I am happy, content and serenely tolerant 99 percent of the time. OK, more like 90-ish. But that’s still a vast improvement over the me of five years ago. Two, anger feeds negativity and fear, neither of which I choose to invite into my life if I can possibly avoid them. See, it has been my experience that the root of my rage, ire, pissed-offed-ness … whatever… is always fear. Fear of the unknown, of failure, of being forced to relax my boundaries. And fear can be a paralyzing emotion. I’m annoyed because this coming week is going to be batshit crazy, and it didn’t have to be that way. Unfortunately, I am not master of the universe (or even MY little universe), so said craziness is beyond my control. I’ve accepted my powerlessness, but that doesn’t make it any easier to swallow. |
About Amy HiggsA former newspaper columnist, Amy takes her random, slice-of-life stories to the web. After 12 years, she's still just saying. Archives
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