I am forty five
Curvy
With the curves in the right places
But never thin enough to satisfy
I have a master’s degree
A job that sounds important
A home
And adequate doses of family & friendships to love and be loved
I am passionate
And awake
And believe in the good, the true, the beautiful
But
I have never been married
I have no children
When the storm came
I was on the boat alone, ceilings falling in
I wondered if it was how it would end as well
The thought shook me to the core
Standing at the edge of the ocean
On the deep horizon
And the rising sun
Warming my back
I wish you were there
Tomorrow always seemed a better day
To think of you
The one I left behind
Time was timeless after all
I have known you for my whole life it seems
The idea of ‘the you’ that would meet ‘the me’
You used to visit me in my sixteen year old dreams
And my twenty, thirty and even forty year old dream
We were supposed to travel and play
And share stories
Change the world with our loving
And manifest the things
In the way only two can do
It is taking you a long time to meet me
Where did we falter?
Why the delay?
Do we even want this?
I realize
I have witnessed enough deterring examples
To sometimes get in my own way of meeting you
Lately I surmised that you are completely
Imaginary
Ephemeral
Untouchable
Are you?
Will you still view me as that sweet girl
You hoped for?
Me in this 45 year old guise
I honestly do not know where the time went.
Or why I gave up on wanting our children
Where dallying in the shallows was safer
And feeling hurt from missing you…
the nostalgia unbearable
Sometimes I become furious with the rules
That suggest I should care
That I should want the things I opted not to have
Otherwise I will be incomplete to it
Is my fury with ‘society’ and the world? Or is it really with myself?
Where is the place for a forty five year old single woman?
No kids or divorces or separations to reflect some kind
Of grown up experience?
In Jane Austen’s time they were the writers
The poets
The spinsters
Has life really changed much since then?
When it comes to the inner life of a woman striving to be enough?
I do not know the answers
I pose the questions
They keep me up at times
I recognize it is possible to be complete and whole yet know
There is something missing
Does such a woman really deserve empathy or sorrow or [yuk] pity for not fitting into the normal mold?
Or is she really an Amazon?
A resilient phoenix?
Who made these rules?
Who carves out the new ones?
It is a difficult time
My heart is unsettled
The world is changing exponentially
The storms are destroying life as I know it
I have no answers
Only more questions
“the moment I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, never knowing how foolish that was. Lovers do not finally meet somewhere, they are in each other… ” –rumi
