18 and 40

It’s been a momentous week. I turned 40 years old and 4 days later we celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary. It’s kind of heavy stuff.

The overall happiness had been dampened a bit by some pretty stressful stuff. It’s not been a fun couple of weeks, and I have been determined to not let it steal my joy. But it really makes this week come full circle in that the challenges we face never seem to let up for long. In 18 years, there isn’t much we haven’t been faced with. Still, I have had a near-constant pit in my stomach for the past 2 weeks. My anxiety is at an all-time high right now. It’s just kind of sucked.

But I want to reflect on my 40 years...I have both done better than I ever probably thought I would, and also feel like a complete failure and that I am faking the hell out of this whole being an adult thing. I don’t feel like I have lived 40 years, but when I look back I feel like I have been alive forever. My body likes to remind me I am 40 on a daily basis, most notably how badly not getting sleep affects my ability to function...I just can’t do what I could even a few years ago on very little sleep. I have thought a lot about relationships that have come and gone, and of people in my life whom I miss terribly, either by death or distance, and wishing there was some sort of portal with which to travel to be close to them again. Turning 40 has made me think a lot about my legacy and what impact I will one day leave behind. I hope I have been a good enough mom to have raised great kids who will hopefully have some of my grit...I hope I have given them just enough tough, fierce love for it to help and not hinder them. I always hope I haven’t royally screwed up my kids by being too much of one thing and not enough of something else. I guess maybe that is normal? Maybe it’s silly, but I hope my kids continue to recycle long after I am gone, and have a heart to take in all the stray dogs. I don’t need to leave a lasting impact on the world, I only care about the impact I have left on my kids. I hope they are proud of the mother I have been to them, even if I am not always proud of myself. I hope they learn something from me for all the times I have had to admit to them that I could have done better.

18 years of marriage is crazy to me. I have almost been with my husband for half of my life. In so many ways that he will probably never even know, he saved me. I wasn’t looking for some knight in shining armor to rescue me, but I can see now that he did. I am not the most gentle or most romantic wife around, I will totally own that. Somehow he loves me anyway. We have had our share of heartaches, both personal and together and some were definitely self-inflicted. We managed to defy all the odds mostly because neither of us saw any other way. Being together so long has been a blessing. It turns out that if you stay together long enough you stop trying to change the other person to be the way you think you need them to be, and you start letting them just be themselves, that’s when you find out that is the exact person you really need. The longer we are married and the older I get, I realize I really only want and need to spend time with him. Maybe it’s because se we don’t really get a lot of alone time, down time together right now. Maybe it’s because we are both homebodies who don’t feel the need to go and be out. We are on the same page about giving our little kids a good schedule and lots of stability and not dragging them all over the place just so we can have a life. As unpopular as our decisions can be sometimes with regards to having to say no to a lot of things and other people not understanding, we get it and don’t even worry about it, as long as we stick together. I have learned that he and I are better together. We have definitely had things happen in our lives where we just didn’t lean on each other as we should have, and it was much more difficult than when we kind of say us against the world and just seek solace in each other. He still makes me laugh, often at myself, but I am still laughing. Sometimes I feel like if I wasn’t laughing I would be crying. I am really glad that we always chose each other and chose to stick it out (sometimes it was only for necessity I swear) because the rewards come from getting past all of that and getting to be in this place together where the love is strong and we know we can make it through whatever life throws our way. This guy I married 18 years ago...he might not always get me, but he definitely accepts me for all the kooky and crazy that I am. We have a house full of love and so much love between us. I am so glad for all the things that had to aline in order for us to meet and get us where we are today.

This post was written for MicroBlog Monday over at Stirrup-queens.com