Mommy

I've been missing my mommy of late. I always miss her, but lately, I have been longing to talk to her so badly. 

Oddly enough, talking to her when she was alive could irritate me like no other. She was always giving me unasked for advice which drove me up the wall! But I was also just getting to know her. We butted heads my whole childhood because I didn't like her mooching leech of a boyfriend. As a young adult, I no longer had to see her deal with him, which left room for us to acquaint ourselves with each other. Now she's gone and I find myself needing to talk to her.

If she had not been cremated, I'd totally be advocating for a Pet Cemetery situation just so we could chat before she'd try to kill me. In this case, I'm sad this this is not a scene from a Stephen King fantasy. I no longer wish to be sad. Time for bed. 

Youth pt. 2

It feels like me and the women in my life turned 39, the universe was alerted, and she sent us an array of crap. The whole thing has me thinking about the meaning of youth. 

As you know, 39 brought me endometrial polyps I had to have plucked out. That was emotional and incredibly stressful for a woman whose anxiety is already so naturally high that I could shoot to the moon on it. A college friend told me that she has already had her mammogram, something that should be set for next year, because our good friend's wife was diagnosed with breast cancer at 39. 

For some of my other girlfriends, the race to have a baby has never been so real, especially for my uncoupled friends that have to weigh waiting for a man with getting a donor. Today, my 39-year-old doctor friend died in hospice care from a disease she wasn't even old enough to get screened for! 

Is the universe trying to tell me and my soon-to-be middle-aged friends to cherish life and your health because you never know what trick life is going to pull out of its hat? Okay! Message received. Now can you please keep all my girls well and alive?

It doesn't work like that. 

When I was a kid, I'd hear my grandma on the phone giving and receiving updates on sick friends and friends who had passed. The whole thing would go over my head, now it's at my feet. For lack of a better word, it's scary. 

Is this to be life from now on? Scared for my wellbeing and that of those I love? I guess this is yet another disgusting part of adulting. My grandma would tell me to pray. I think I will. 

Youth

When you are young, people will tell you, "Do it while you are young." " Enjoy it while you're young". And the people who really know what they are talking about will tell you, "You are only young once" because that is, truly, the long and short of it. But no one will tell you that you are thinking all wrong, as if your youth has an expiration date. 21 you are young. 41 you are not.

Every now and then someone you view as truly ancient will tell you that you are only as young as you feel. Okay. But you are also only as young as you are, and all of these things have to coexist in you as truth as you move and love and do what you do. I am learning what I find it hard to articulate to others: youth is not something you have but more like a shadow that moves with you. And just like a man that don't want you no more, she will begin to spiritually withdraw until the coast is clear to jump ship completely. And one day you wake up honey and you are you, minus that special something that excused you, that ran your operations system, that set your goal calendar. You are now a new you that you may or may not welcome, and no one, not even women, prepares women for this. 

One day, you are expected to just take out your First Aid kit and begin to treat the wounds youth left behind and begin to transition to the mature you, the senior you, that respects money, takes vitamins, and gives a sh%t! And don't be that old person who is haunted by youth traumas like financial stuff and love ailments. Life has time for you like it has time for itself, and you go from a work in progress to a relic that hurts people's eyes. No one wants to see you until there is something to see. And to think, just 20 years ago, you were dancing on a table someplace. You will remember these times until you die with pristine precision, which is both beautiful and cruel. What we are talking about here is the equivalent of catching a firefly in your hands. The bulb is flickering. The end.