Today’s my birthday. I’m 50 years old. And I’m feeling it — but not in a “tired old man” kind of way. I’m just… different now, than I was at 49.
I see things differently, ya know? I still have the same life… the same wants… the same past… and yet, somehow…
I’m learning to see it all through a different lens… one that’s more compassionate, more forgiving, more understanding, than I ever thought I could be with myself.
And maybe because of that, I’m finally putting less pressure on myself, and letting life just... happen… the way my soul really wants it to happen…
And I don’t have to become “some version of myself” now, before I can feel like I have permission to start living.
Now, I just have permission to live.
To sing.
To eat.
To rest.
To cry. (I’m doing a lot of crying…)
To admit that I want the past I never had… and that maybe I’m allowed to want it, while simultaneously leaving it in the past, and finally moving toward a life that doesn’t need any of those past people, places, or things, in order to make my life worth living.
Maybe life is just worth living, for its own sake. I mean, maybe, philosophically, it doesn’t matter what kind of life you’re living…
Maybe all that matters is that you are living it…
I don’t know. Right now, I feel like I don’t know anything.
Everything is changing.
And I don’t even know if I can keep up.
I still want to hurt myself, and burn everything down, and push everyone away, and ruin my whole life!
And just be left alone.
But I’ve stopped actual self-harm. At least for now.
And I’ve Marie Kondo’d my apartment a bazillion times and donated or thrown out probably 80% of everything I used to own, and I don’t want to burn down what little I have left. I wanna keep it, enjoy it, preserve it, and let it remind me of what really matters to me, and maybe inspire me to keep digging in therapy until I finally uncover my real identity and values…
And I have had to walk away from a friendship or two in the past few months, and that does make me want to throw everything away and never open myself up to anybody new because that choice hurts even when it is the right choice.
It still feels like this tremendous loss and I don’t care what anybody tells me; it doesn’t get better. It stays with you for the rest of your life, and it just hurts, and it doesn’t even matter whose fault it is, every lost friend is heartache that never heals.
But still… I have to admit that even though it hurts, my life is better for having known them, and for the time we did get together.
But I wish I could bring every one of them with me. It seems like that would be a happier way to live.
And I think I’ve stopped actively and passively looking for ways to ruin everything. I mean I probably still make mistakes. I probably still mess things up. But who doesn’t?
But I’m not helpless against it, anymore.
And I think I’m starting to see that in other areas of my life, too.
Since leaving the mental hospital last year, I’ve made a series of choices that have made me, for the first time ever, financially stable and secure.
I’m living well below my means (like my actual living expenses in Lubbock only take up 40% of my monthly income).
I’m tithing 10%. Saving 10% in a revolving travel fund so whenever I wanna take a spontaneous 4-day road trip, I’ll already have the money. I’m investing 10% in index funds so that maybe, someday, Future Michael will have significantly more money to play with than Present Day Michael — even though Present Day Michael already has more than enough to maintain his current lifestyle.
I have six months’ worth of savings…
And I have a net worth that’s almost equal to an entire year’s income.
So I’m doing great, financially. And that brings me tremendous peace of mind. I can’t even tell you what it feels like. It’s something you can only experience yourself.
My financial stability is inspiring me to finally take better care of my physical health. I’ve cut DoorDash from probably 8-10 times a month, to 1-2. I’ve started cooking at home more often, and I eat fresh fruits and vegetables every day.
(And I’m eating a lot of PB&J, on organic bread with all-natural peanut butter, and organic fruit spread, and I really love it!)
I’m learning about “floor living.” Which as I understand it, basically just means you don’t have any furniture and you sit, eat, work, sleep, play, and rest, on the floor.
I already started sleeping on the floor like two or three years ago, and it’s been great for my fibromyalgia. But I still insisted on sitting on my couch to read, eat, rest, watch TV — even though my couch absolutely destroyed my back!
I kept thinking, “Well this is what people do though, and I want to be people so I guess the couch has to stay…”
But when I moved into my one-bedroom apartment, I decided to let the couch go, and I’ve been eating, reading, resting, writing, and watching TV, sitting on the floor, ever since.
And my body really likes it!
(And yet I still sit in a rolly chair at my computer desk for hours on end, and complain about how uncomfortable that setup is! Hahahaha I guess humans are just like that sometimes…)
I still wanna avoid my painful memories, though. That stuff still huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurts…
But maybe that just proves that I’m human? I don’t know. Humans do go to great lengths to avoid personal pain. And there’s more than one boatload of pain, still littering the halls of my past.
And I do hate it.
I want it to go away.
I want to behave as if it doesn’t bother me.
I want my high school girlfriend Carrie to magically appear on my doorstep and love me and hold me and tell me everything is going to be okay.
I know people will say that’s an unhealthy desire. And it probably is. But you know what’s more unhealthy? In my opinion?
Lying about what you really want.
I know it’s extremely unlikely! (I’m not ready yet to acknowledge that it’s impossible.) But I want to go to sleep tonight, and to wake up tomorrow, 15 years old, back in high school, before I even met Carrie…
(And still knowing that I’m about to meet her, and that I’m going to spend my entire life hopelessly in love with her…)
And I want to do everything different.
I want to win her love, the way I did before — but this time I wanna keep it, forever.
I want her to choose me.
I want her to wait for me.
I want her to marry me and have our children.
I want my life to revolve around our family.
I don’t wanna be fifty, and still alone. I don’t wanna wonder if I’m always going to be alone.
I’m never going to have the life I wanted to have, with Carrie.
It might be true to say the life I wanted to have with her, was never going to happen, regardless. Like, maybe what I wanted and what I thought we had together wasn’t even what God had planned for both of us.
Now that I’m starting to understand my own mental health, and the ways I imagine scenarios that never play out in real life… it’s very possible that I imagined a future life with Carrie that wasn’t based on what our relationship even meant to either of us, or what it truly had to offer.
I might have spent the last 30 years of my life, holding onto a fantasy that I knew would never come true.
I might still want it to come true. (I would give up everything to make it come true.)
How much more of my life am I going to give up, until I’m willing to accept that it’s never coming true — and that it’s okay for me to let go of the fantasy, and finally start living for what’s real?