August 2006 – Life Begins at 41…or maybe 43

Percolating in Triumph‘s Thunder Seven and the Sport of Kings. Still free floating in 1986/1987. My Christmas 1986 present was those two albums and tickets to the Triumph “Sport of Kings Tour” concert in January 1987, followed about a month later by being dumped. I won’t hold that against Triumph, though — Thunder Seven still rocks and the concert was awesome. I think it was the last concert I ever attended. In later years, I occasionally saw bands in night clubs and the like but I never went to another arena concert.

What’s weird is I’m sitting here listening to those albums with the Big Brother live feeds open in another window. Kind of a surreal and bizarre mix. Thankfully the hammies are all asleep on the feed so the music is unimpeded.

I’m having one of those days (lives?) when you’re caught in a timewarp, stuck at some prior point in your lifetime. I’m stuck in 1986 tonight, a melancholy fueled by the music that marks that period of time in my memories…cycling over and over and over with 1986 playing out in moving pictures in my head.

My life stopped in 1987 and I’ve been the walking dead for 20 years. I really never noticed. What kind of insanity is this grief that it should have lasted years…no, decades…longer than it deserved? It deserved less anguish time than the relationship lasted but, hey, when did fairness ever enter into anything? Had you asked me, I would have sworn it was long gone, gone since, oh, 1990 when he made me the “other woman” to his new relationship. But there it is, this little knot of anguish that hasn’t healed or hardened over since then.

There’s a voice inside me that tells me that I should have done “the deed” back then, instead of cloaking myself in layers and slowly smothering to death. I haven’t thought of him in years but lately he’s been in my dreams. Disturbing dreams of the present day. And the residue of the dreams bleeds over into the day, leaving me crabby and sad and anxiety-ridden. I know the dreams aren’t really about him but I’m not sure where my psyche is trying to take me; I only know that I’m afraid of the ride. I’ve spent years spinning a cocoon around myself and I don’t know if there’s anything left inside or if I’ll unravel it to find someone I don’t know or worse, don’t like. I’m afraid to look.

It took me 19 years to become the girl I was before I met him. It’s taken me another 19 (give or take) to become the woman I’ve become since he left. I think that’s more than enough time. Fear of the unknown notwithstanding, I’m tired of being this person. I want to be a different me for the next 19 years of my life. Not someone else, just a different me. I don’t want to be what I am now when I’m 60. Assuming I haven’t finally passively suicided by then by eating or worrying myself into a fatal heart attack, it would be extremely sucky to be what I am…or worse…then.

So, life begins at 41.

My life begins today…

…well, once 1986 stops playing in my head, that is.