FtB: pre-birthday feelings

[originally posted at feelings: the blog on june 23rd, 2010.]

tomorrow is my birthday.

i'll be turning 39.

i'll be one year from 40. and i'm trying very hard not to panic.

i feel like 40 is this ENORMOUS life marker awaiting me 365 days from now, and that i am careening towards it with no real sense of where i'm going or why.

that, at a time when most people have their lives in order -- they've got jobs, and homes, and children, and partners, and lives -- i'm not even close. i don't even register. that i have no true direction or purpose. that i am much more of a kid than an adult, awkward and bumbling and clueless. that i don't understand anything about life and that i haven't yet learned how to take care of myself properly. that my days don't matter. that i'm just drifting on a pointless current, hoping that something along way finally snags me or grabs me or anchors me or just starts to steer me. that ages 0 to 39 are about gaining, and the years from 40 onwards slowly begin the move towards loss. not in an "over the hill" way, but in a growing up and growing older and saying goodbye way.

and, for me, that's fucking scary.

it keeps me awake at night and sends anxiety speeding through my veins.

what am i doing with my life? what do i have to show for it? where will i be a year from now? five years? ten?

in the past, i've always thought, "well, at least i'm not 40."

"at least i'm not 40 and alone."

"at least i'm not 40 and unemployed."

"at least i'm not 40 and a failure."

the comfort always being: at least there's still time left. at least i haven't reached that tipping point. at least i haven't hit the halfway point of life. at least i haven't watched every last year of my comparative "youth" disappear. there's still time before 40.

but now, that sand is pouring out of the hourglass at lightning speed and that time is running out very, very quickly. and i'm so hugely afraid that what i am now is all i will ever be. that, come next june, nothing will have changed, and i will be a 40-year-old loser.

i never, ever thought i would be where i am. and yet here i sit.

terrified.

and i really really want to arrive on my 40th birthday feeling different. feeling satisfied. feeling whole... or even mostly whole. feeling proud of, and content with, the preceding 12 months and looking forward to the year ahead with joy and anticipation and excitement.

i just have to figure out how to do that.