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I'm worried about a friend.
11 years ago
He thinks his life's over now he's 30 & his party friends moved on. I felt that way too. Sometimes I still do.
I've had friends die, let alone move away, & I didn't make new ones. I had to let others who got bitter & toxic go. My relationship became based on things we've survived together, not attraction. My possessions became a burden I'd like to lighten. I phone in my job & wonder if I'll be fit to find another if I have to. My body is falling apart & I'm only learning by force how to slow the process.
But I have this vague idea that I, nearly 47, am only just now learning how to live, & the living I've yet to do will make me look back on my 20's with embarrassment. I wish I knew how to pass that idea on. Maybe he'll see this & get it. I hope so.
I've had friends die, let alone move away, & I didn't make new ones. I had to let others who got bitter & toxic go. My relationship became based on things we've survived together, not attraction. My possessions became a burden I'd like to lighten. I phone in my job & wonder if I'll be fit to find another if I have to. My body is falling apart & I'm only learning by force how to slow the process.
But I have this vague idea that I, nearly 47, am only just now learning how to live, & the living I've yet to do will make me look back on my 20's with embarrassment. I wish I knew how to pass that idea on. Maybe he'll see this & get it. I hope so.
I feel like our society doesn't really give us much to go on. It tells us stuff about being a teenager or a 20 something; it tells us pretty much only one model for being in our 30s-50s (be married, have a career, have kids and house and car all as an offshoot of having been fiscally successful in our 20s - or be a series of bad jokes about older divorced guys, okay, so that's two models); and it gives us an idealized view of some of actually being old. We are told so much about making it in our 20s or earlier that really, it would be easy to get the impression that if by 30 one doesn't have a wife, career job, kids, it's over; you're a short distance from death, or from being one of the old homeless guys you run into.
But people are a lot more diverse than that. My 30s and 40s aren't the same as yours, they won't be the same as your friend's, they aren't the same as my neighbors living upstairs, they aren't the same as the 1st generation immigrants living a few blocks from me. It certainly isn't the one or two paths we're being told. In the presence of such little information, all anyone can do is keep moving along to see what happens next.
When you're robbed of the supporting framework of your life, regardless of whether or not its influence was positive or negative, you can't help but panic about what comes next--it's scary suddenly having to create something substantial and meaningful out of your life. It's all to easy to surrender and fill the void between the necessities with things which numb you rather than enrich you.
I wish I had your confidence about what lies ahead. I'm afraid of even getting out of this chair.