on getting older.

It’s not that I mind getting older. Really! It’s just that I can’t quite believe that I am. I think about how much time has passed since I began graduate school and I’m amazed. I think about all that’s happened; I think about the way things were before—the people I knew, the people I didn’t know, the status of my family, the things I liked doing, my state of mind—and I know I can never be like that again. I was 21, so young.

And now my brother is getting married, and I am amazed every time I talk to him because he is definitely a man. I still feel like a girl. And yet, he is almost 27 years old. In some circles, that’s an old age to get married. And I’ll be 29 in less than two months. I look in the mirror and I see wrinkles around my eyes. Pretty ones, I think, laugh lines. When I smile, they stretch down the sides of my face lazily, caressing the tops of my cheeks.

I always thought by now my life would be in order: I would be married, I would have kids, I would have a job, I would be doing something I loved, or at least something that pays the bills. And yet, here I am, 9:30 on a Tuesday morning, sitting in a computer lab, writing a blog entry before getting started working on a paper, like 18- to 21- year old college students everywhere.

I always thought my legacy would be my children; something of me to live on after I’m gone. At the very least, I thought my legacy would be the love I shared with another person. Now, I’m thinking… well, not that I’m unlovable per se, but I’m definitely difficult. I heard a Bjork song this morning, Cocoon. It’s one of my favorites (I recently made a playlist called “these are songs that make me feel” and all of them are my favorites. I really love it; I would put a track list but I know you don’t care, plus it’s 245 songs). She says:

Who would have known

That a boy like him

After sharing my core

Would stay going nowhere

And I guess what I’m trying to say is that after all of my experience dating, sleeping around, etc., I have determined that I am not going to find this person. At the most optimistic, I think it’s fair to say that I might not.

So then, what is to be my legacy? If I can’t rely on these things?

All I have is my work. In the Jeanette Winterson novel I’m reading (Art and Lies, 1994) she says “if all you’re doing is living, you can only die.” And what are the implications of this statement? For waiting around, for pursuing your dreams, for seeking happiness, for work?

All I really have for sure; the only legacy I can know I will leave is my work. So I have to keep working. I always felt so sorry for those people who all they had was their work, but sometimes it’s not your choice.

So I’ll continue to work.

The other day I was walking to my building from the parking deck and I noticed the holly type bushes were growing new leaves. They are lighter green than the older leaves, and the magical thing is, you can run your hand through without any pain or scratches. I felt the little points on the leaves as I ran my hand through the very top of the bushes. As the leaves get older, they will become tougher, and it will be impossible to get so close to them. The heart of the bush will be farther away and increasingly inaccessible. The leaves will soon be trimmed back, and cut off from their life sources, will lie dying on the sidewalk until the landscapers blow them away with their leaf blowers. Sad, I know, but it serves a purpose. The rotting leaves will make mulch for the soil, fertilizing it so more leaves can grow. Just not them.

I immediately thought to myself, this is like me. I am that bush. Impossible to get close to, destined only to be trimmed off, hoping only to fertilize the soil for the growth of others. So is that me, or what? Why do I feel like I am constantly on the outside looking in? Why is it that others seem to flourish and not me?

I watched Through a Glass Darkly (1961) last night. I was afraid to watch it because it’s an Ingmar Bergman film and I just watched the Seventh Seal (1957) and hated it. I felt at the end like I had been forced to watch Bergman’s existentialist search for meaning/wrestling match with Catholicism, which I found quite boring, although I’m sure it was a big deal in the 50s. Apparently Bergman said that the movie helped him overcome his fear of death, and I’m glad, but it didn’t do much for me. Through a Glass Darkly was awesome, though. It was about a woman who literally in the course of two days goes violently insane. She was home in her isolated home in northern Sweden after being institutionalized for an indeterminate time, and her dad comes home, a writer who has abandoned his family for his art (there’s also some really weird weirdness with her brother that thankfully did not resonate with my own experiences). Her husband, a doctor, loves her but basically has to watch as she willingly loses her grip on reality.

So why was it so awesome? First of all, the actress who played Karin was amazing. I mean, you have to see it to believe it. Like the little girl in The Exorcist (1973, also featuring Max von Sydow, incidentally), you just can’t believe she’s NOT actually going insane. The story, too, really appealed to me. I mean, everyone knew that what was driving Karin crazy wasn’t real; that her hallucinations were just that. The whole time, I was frustrated along with her family that she wouldn’t just “come to her senses” and snap out of it. At the same time, by the end of the film, like Karin, I felt that she had no other options. It was a very frustrating story and it really spoke to the way I’ve been feeling lately. I know I am making big deals out of nothing. I know that. I know that if I could just come to my senses, I would see how many people actually care about me, and how much I’ve got going for me. And I know, like Karin knew, that how I feel, which side I take, which reality I exist in, is a choice. I have only to make it.

So, pushed to the wall, forced to admit I am getting older and forced to make such decisions, I choose work. Work will be my legacy, and work will be my touchstone. I guess it’s either that or insanity. And frankly, I don’t have my family with me to make sure I get in that helicopter to the hospital, and I don’t have my husband with me to give me a sedative when I have a screaming fit about seeing God, who turns out to be a huge spider.