Forty

As the clock ticks and I start my 41st year of life I find myself feeling pensive, somber, and listless. Even in a normal year such a big milestone would feel big to me - but Covid has a way of sucking the life out of the room, and the joy from a moment.

I've been thinking about my life and how it's starting to feel long - like there really are so many memories and those of my younger years are starting to fade. I also find myself full of anxiety and remorse. I spend a lot of time ruminating about the past and wondering if I could or should have changed the choices I made at certain points at time. Then I start to realize that the social isolation of avoiding the virus makes it feel like I'm in a nightmare when the reality is that I have almost everything I could have ever wished for. A happy marriage, two beautiful sons and a gorgeous home I am grateful for. Then I realize that nothing I could have done in the past would change the fact that in this time I am far away from family and any social support that would keep the seams of my sanity stitched together. Each day is a rehash of yesterday's routine - get up early, take care of the kids' needs, work and work some more, make dinner, do dishes, bedtime routine and collapse from exhaustion. There is no career move that would make this reality any easier, there's no amount of money that would fix it. My spouse is already more than I could have hoped for as my partner on the lifeboat. We are just drifting through this storm together with little control, except to accept the conditions which have been thrown at us and keep our chins up. Waiting... waiting. Praying my mom stays healthy for another 5 and a half months so I can hug her, in the flesh, after 2 long years. Suppressing the primal urge to cry every day because life isn't fair and ... I know... I know... that I am lucky. We have it good.

I think often about whether my brain will be able to adjust to normal life once I'm vaccinated, and a sufficient % of the population is vaccinated such that we can return to anything that seems remotely normal. Will I take it for granted? Am I now a germaphobe for life?  Will there ever be a day that I can get on a plane or go to a movie theater without batting an eye? I'm not sure. Even when the time comes I feel like there will be a lot of grief to process, grief that I must now suppress to make it through the day.

40 is getting close to what, if I'm lucky, is probably about half way through my life. I wonder if I'll ever get to do all the things on my bucket list, and whether the time will pass ever more quickly as I age. I'll continue to wonder if my life has been meaningful and whether my priorities are straight. Good bye 30s. It feels like yesterday that I entered this stage of young adulthood, and in a flash I am older but not sure if I am any wiser.