The rip.

Elijah , Lucky, and Lowin

I captured this image this morning. A few minutes seated outside having Sunday coffee and breakfast with my boys. Each of us are doing the wordle. There is good music on and everyone is looking at their phone.

It is perfect.

An hour later I have the perfect song playing on the perfect sunny day in my car with a perfectly poured Dunkin Cold Brew (there is room for more coffee always). There is time in front of me to do what I am headed out for, breakfast and Wordle both completed and a plan for perhaps what the rest of this day will hold. I am calm and collected. Peaceful even. rip.

Despite the perfect drink, song, ride, time, I am sad? low? unsettled? lumpy? I am lumpy. A lump in my throat, one in my chest and the next threatening my stomach. Fuck, here I go.

Welcome to my undertow. At the surface, gentle waves rock my sunlit sailboat while below the surface the undertow threatens to tear me out to sea. rip.

At the risk of baring too much and causing people to cast me out for saying all that I am trying to articulate & better capture to understand myself, the past 10 months have been the perfect metaphor of calm seas and a life threatening undertow lurking below. Or at least, this is how I describe it.

There is no mystery as to why these 10 months have been a daily attempt to poker face my way through each day. Those lumps in my throat feeling more like a noose than a necklace that I secretly wear hoping no one asks how I am (they do, so I lie or I say too much. rip.).

It has taken me all 10 months to actually see and inwardly list out each risk point so I can better understand why this undertow has had me struggling to come up for air every day.

I am 49something. I think that is a new category and I am claiming it. 49something – like 20something, 30something… but more specific. 49something . This 49something has been shaped by each pull under the surface and each breath I took when I came back up.

49something began with both of my boys out and off to college. Empty nesting is not how it felt. The anxiety ahead of their August departure was way worse than them actually being gone. My nest can’t be empty, too many plants and pets to ever feel empty. But the grief was real. THEY WILL NEVER BE LITTLE OR NEED TO CALL OUT MAMA AGAIN. rip.

Grief

49something also began with a new and very unexpected job. An all consuming, nerve wracking, very challenging, “I never wanted this”, first ever J.O.B.. A career of following my dreams and passions upset by a new role and position that I felt/feel wholly capable of but find fully in opposition to everything I find fulfilling when I think about my work. “My daughter, I think you will never feel fulfillment sitting at your desk like the rest of us”, mom said a few weeks back to me. My work fulfillment is sweaty, smelly, human in all ways as a career fitness, doula, massage therapist. Vomit and blood do not carry the impact of an excel spreadsheet to me. Emails & spreadsheets are the undertow. rip.

Spreadsheets

Grief

49something hit perimenopause. I thought I appreciated my skin until I was chasing after it like a 2 year old after a kite string. “YOU WILL NEVER CATCH ME!” says the 49something skin. Anxiety, random fatigue, disturbed sleep, all the rest that perimenopause is serving up. Dear Body, rip.

Perimenopause

Spreadsheets

Grief

49something still struggles with money, struggles with marriage, struggles with her sister, struggles just with the near 50 years of always struggling. Who am I without it? Dad says, “You inherited the Farrell gene. Who are you if you aren’t a little (a lot) depressed and or anxious? ” Big brown eyes, dark curly hair, the love of movement, and depression. My genealogy undertow. rip.

Depression4eva

Perimenopause

Spreadsheets

Grief

So when this perfectly caffeinated sunny Sunday morning ripped me under mid-song, I wasn’t surprised. I just wondered if this would be a 30min drowning or the rest of the day.

The countdown from 49something to 50 is short at this point. Work is regulated and I am building up a callous of grief each time the boys leave. This way it hurts less and less. I don’t focus on the undertow and I even forget it’s there most days until I feel the sand beneath my feet pulling away. I tell myself that the best songs are written by melancholy artists and my emotional connectivity is my best asset with the best parts of my work.

Nonetheless, drowning is hard. Fighting to breathe is hard. This year has been hard. I have always done hard things. Not sure if I am stronger for it or just used to the rip.