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A Pause Between Chapters
I do not fear that one day I’ll find myself standing in the mirror, gazing into the sunken blue eyes on my old, wrinkly face, thinking: I never really lived. I wish I saw the world. I wish I loved more.
I’m grateful to know I won’t look back with the sorrow, or regret of letting fear stand in the way of doing the things I wanted to do.
I have, though, begun to fear that my best days are behind me. What if the memories and adventures I’ve already lived were as good as it gets?
I worry that I didn’t realize I was in my best days soon enough to truly enjoy them.
Maybe that’s because I spent so many years running—rushing to experience it all, afraid to waste a single moment. I took the phrase “live like there’s no tomorrow” seriously, cramming what feels like a life’s worth of stuff into 10 years (and never once being concerned about a 401k).
Existentially, I feel…a little bit tired.
I joke with co-workers about how my current job is simply my retirement job. I’m just doing it to kill time and stay busy.
I come home to my cozy yellow house, feed the squirrels on my porch, write my little stories (or binge-watch sh*tty reality TV), and curl up in bed with my cat.
Is this…it?
Of course, I don’t really believe that all my best days are behind me, but certainly some damn good ones are. Some days so good, it’s hard to imagine there could be much better. And some days so f*cking horrible, I sure hope there couldn’t be much worse.
I have to remind myself that I’m actually still in the beginning. I’m 28 for gods sake.
And, if I do drop dead tomorrow, I’ll die proud of the way I lived—the things I’ve accomplished…even if I’m the only one to really recognize those things.
If I don’t die tomorrow, and I do have more best (and worst) days to come, well, I’m gonna need a freakin’ breather.
It’s time to pause. Reflect. Catch myself up on where I’m at.
I’m not sure how long of a break I will need, but I’ll consider this chapter of my life a checkpoint. Not a mid-life crisis, but a mid-life retirement. A season of nothingness—no big goals to accomplish or flights to catch. Just stillness, a rocking chair, and a good book.
I will gather my memories along with all the things I’ve learned from them—from the front porch of the yellow house where I’ll occasionally wave to my neighbor or talk to the postman about the weather.
Friends will call and ask “What’s new?” expecting another crazy little adventure on my docket, and I will respond “nothing,” and it will kill me every time—but, that will be the truth, at least for a little while. And I will be begrudgingly glad that it is.
I do feel like I am slowing down. Which scares the living hell out of me. Occasionally, I worry that the adventure of life is coming to an end, but maybe, hopefully, I’m wrong.
Maybe, the best really is “yet to come” and this is just a beginning. Except this time, I get the chance to be here—really here—to truly cherish the journey while I’m in it.
~
author: Jenna Susson
Image: Author's Own
Editor: Lisa Erickson
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