Maladies of Middle Age

Week 23
(YAY! Halfway through the year!)

Age catches up to all of us. It does it at different times, it may do it in slightly different ways, but it never fails to catch up. You wake up one morning and parts of your body are suddenly too sore to easily move. You’re hearing creaks and pops from joints you didn’t even realize you had.

You pick up a book and are startled to discover it has to be pulled nearer or pushed farther away to make the words legible. Reading glasses become the only solution. If you already have vision issues you will rapidly be introduced to the wonderful world of bifocals or progressive lenses.

One day you will realize you run out of steam a lot faster than you did before you stood at the peak of the middle years hump. Gradually, you are forced to admit that four hours sleep a night just isn’t enough to recharge your batteries any more. Unfortunately, for many, sleeplessness can also become a frequent visitor.


Generally, your waistline thickens and a few pounds can easily slip into a lot of pounds if you aren’t careful. The pounds that go on require twice as much effort to get rid of as they did a year ago. You discover that different foods and drink you’ve eaten your entire life suddenly cause a variety of new maladies. They can cause you to get heartburn, to burp, to fart, to get a bellyache, to pee more or pee less, etc., etc., etc.

For females you get to experience the joys of Menopause. Your hormones suddenly run amok causing hot flashes, night sweats, mood swings, increased stress, forgetfulness, menstrual cycles that come and go on a schedule all their own, etc.

Things on your body droop a bit more, wrinkle a bit more, and may not pop up as much as they used to. I won’t even dare to touch the subject of sex because the changes in this area, for both males and females, are as vast as the universe itself. Trust me, when they begin to happen you’ll know it. You may not like it, but you will definitely know it. On the bright side, as far as I can tell, there seems to be a solution out there for just about any problem you can encounter in this area.

Don’t even get me started on the oddity of the sneeze/leak factor. If it’s ever happened to you, you know what I mean! Since complaining about it all hasn’t seemed to get me anywhere, I think I will attempt to revel in it. I will embrace the absurdity of middle-aged maladies and just keep smiling. After all, if I'm lucky, I still have old age to look forward to.

Under There Somewhere

Week 8

This has been an odd week. I have had a couple of mini-breakdowns that were prevented from becoming major by my wonderful diligent friends. My emotions have been on a rollercoaster that I have been unable to stop. Sleep has become nearly impossible and when I do manage to get there, I am tormented with non-stop dreams. I can’t remember the last time I felt at peace. The restlessness and anxieties of a life completely out of control are beginning to taking a toll on me. Normally, I am capable of having complete control of dozens of things at once. Lately, I come up empty at every turn.

On Friday I think I started to get a grip on things. I made time for ME. I stole a bit of time. I went to the beach and took photographs of the sky, the sea, the beauty of a cloud-filled sky that negated sunset. I stopped several times on the path back to my mother’s house to photograph trees. As I did, I realized that I had found that elusive peace I am so desperately in need of. I’m sure you know the kind of peace I’m talking about. It’s when you are all alone and quiet, and suddenly you realize you can breathe. The stress is pushed away and your heart is free! I focused on staying focused and for a while I was able to keep all my demons at bay.

In the last two and a half years, I have been with and cared for my mother-in-law, my grandmother, and my father-in-law while they died. I felt comfortable in the knowledge that it was their “time”. I lost a sister-in-law who incidentally was one of my best friends. I was shocked at the suddenness of her death. I know how hard her life had been with mental illness and an endless cycle of addiction. An early death should have been perhaps expected.

Mama being diagnosed with terminal Cancer was completely unexpected. It came at me out of the blue. I can’t stand her disease. I can’t stand the pain it causes her. I can’t stand that I feel like my entire life is being ripped apart. I keep telling myself how lucky we are because it has given us time to really get to know one another. There was a time when we barely knew each other at all. Most importantly, we have discovered we genuinely like each other. I am so sorry it has taken imminent death to break down the barriers of a lifetime between us. I don’t dwell on that aspect of things. I simply try to stay focused on where we are now in our relationship. Where we are is a really good place.

I think the hardest part of it all right now is the utter feeling of helplessness in all aspects of my life. Somewhere along the way, I became a sort of Superwoman; capable of doing everything for everybody, being everything to everybody, handling every crisis for everybody. The more I took on, the greater the weight of the load.

I woke up one day and realized I was using all my energy on others and had none left for me. Do I sound like I’m whining? If so, it’s okay, I have every right to occasionally because it turns out I’m only human. I am allowed to bend in the onslaught of the storm. But I will never break. I can survive anything because of who I am and how I was raised. If I am a bit overwhelmed by the crap that life dishes out, I will look for the lessons hidden under the pile of poo. There are always lessons under there somewhere. And I will never lose sight of the fact that I am me and I am under there somewhere, too.