Making Life Again….not babies….

I feel like I’ve been at a stand still for some time now…almost like an emotional or spiritual paralysis…not like an intentional resistance to move on more like an involuntary unsureness of now what…now where? “Midlife Malaise” (a term from a book a girlfriend recently recommended).

There are probably pinnacle times in life when we pour ourselves into accomplishing certain goals in life…that fire to finish school, establish careers, find a partner, start and raise families, root ourselves into our communities, make meaningful impacts and accomplish big things…moments of fighting tooth and nail with bleeding finger tips trying to make those deadlines and check those boxes…and it’s exhausting, whether we hit those marks or fail trying. 

I guess what happens between pinnacle moments is really what life is.  The unexpected, the unpredictable….and when we aren’t striving and accomplishing, we are just riding those waves in between.

After we closed our chapter on trying to have babies last year, I was ultimately left with a feeling of what I can best describe as rebellion.  Rebellion to the bs expectations I put on myself or the bs expectations I felt otherwise burdened by.  Rebellion for me, felt like a desire for wilderness, figurative chaos … imaginary forests with overgrown trees and messy abundance of unruliness….big open spaces where I could just breath again…be free again…new mental and emotional space where I could feel refreshed and inspired again…like an imaginary escape that could evoke immediate feelings of newness and exhilaration that would cure the flatness of failed trying.  But where was that? What could that look like? How could I find and experience that?

It’s a pretty tall task to translate these things into every day responsible adult life. (an old me might have found that in partying with friends, travel, tons of reflection, maybe a new job or new relationships). 

So instead of discovering, seeking and striving….I’ve been sitting…dipping my toes into potential pools of relief…whether it’s been making new friends at work, dipping deeper into some new personal friendships, reaching back to some old friends, attending a new Church every so often, or having gone to a Women’s Retreat with some beautiful girl friends, reprioritizing my health again, reconnecting with family (all of which I’ve done in peppered and inconsistent bouts)…. But maybe even just this period of indecision has it’s place…maybe these blank stretches of noncommittal coasting is in and of itself therapeutic…because after a bit of a hiatus, here I am, in front of my computer ready to write and move…well sort of.

I wonder what “making life” again looks like.  Does it mean a creating a bucket list? Does it mean creating new dreams? What breathes that fire again? Is it in having purpose? 

I’m not quite sure where it is, or what it actually looks like but I know it’s somewhere here in between my last pinnacle moment and the next one…… <3

The Mathews 2018

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