Question

Death at 60

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What if 60 is the limit.
What if 60 is when the time is up.

What if I only have another 23 years left?

Another 20 years?

That isn’t much.

Patterns show me that most people don’t make it past 60.

If they do, then usually they seem to make it for a lot longer.

I want to be of healthy body and mind well into my 100s.

Is this a false belief? Is this overly optimistic? Is this based on any actual evidence?

I don’t want to die at 60. I don’t want to die at 70, I don’t want to die in another 20 or 30 years.

One of my biggest fears is that I won’t be able to experience and live all the different lives that I want to in my lifetime here on earth. It’s always scared me. I can detach from it and realise that death is such a natural part of the human existence, but it doesn’t stop me from deep down inside feeling terrified of it.

I’ve heard that’s what separates humans from other animals, is that we know we die. What if that in itself is a lie too, it’s only what we think we know. How do we know any of it? This is such a dangerous and exhausting spiral to go down, and I don’t want to.

I just have this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that I may only have another 20 years left and it is about to make me cry. I can focus on all the good things. In fact, this feeling emerged when I was thinking about all of the good things in my life last night. I was looking at my dear little son and feeling so much love for him, and I saw my husband and felt so much love, I thought about my incredible day with my mother’s group and my cup felt like it was overflowing, and I loved that feeling, I love that feeling. So why on earth is this dark shadow now creeping up, this shadow that makes me want to believe that I only have so many more years to live. I mean, I know it’s true. I know death is inevitable, but it’s not going to happen tomorrow, it’s not going to happen tonight. Honestly I really don’t know if any of that is true, I only know about right now.

Does it help writing it out? Do I feel like I’ve released some of the pressure? Yes. Can I take a deeper breath because I’ve let it out? Yes.

I want to live. I want to experience more life in my life. I have so much more to give, love, experience, absorb, learn, dance with. I need more time.

One Child or More?

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How do you actually know? How do you know for sure you want to have another child? How do you know for sure that the one you have is the only one you’ll ever want and need in your life?

Always torn between the longing of having a big family, I always think it will be different from my own, that we’ll get along, live nearby one another and be doing well in life. I don’t know this from experience, and I haven’t seen it modelled very much in my life, but I think it can happen, I feel like it can. I would love to see my husband be a dad to another child, he is amazing with our sweet two year old son. I would love to see our sweet toddler be a big brother to some one and teach the new baby how to do things, I can imagine he would be great at it, patient, kind, naturally sharing like he is with our mothers group kiddos. I think myself how lovely it would be to experience this kind of love with yet another person, having a son has opened my heart in entirely new ways, and has helped to deepen my relationship with my husband in so many ways too, it feels secure, it feels strong and I love that feeling.

There are parts that still get me tied up, the parts that make me keep using birth control and keep with our family only having one child. This morning we were having smoked salmon on croissants for breakfast. How decadent really and it’s in part because I am a stealth shopper, but also because it’s just the tidy three of us and our food money can go a lot further. When I think back over the weekend when we went to two different community style festivals, it was awesome for many reasons, including that since there’s only one child, the burden of looking after a child in a crowd is distributed, we can each carry him and still give him attention while we explore ourselves with a bit of freedom for each parent. I guess it’s freedom that is the part that always comes back to me when thinking of staying just with one child. The freedom of being able to quickly get up and go when we want, the freedom of a set sleeping schedule that allows my husband and I time to do other things at night that interest us. I like the idea of a large family, but for practical and slightly selfish reasons I think having just one is great, we can go on trips easier and for a lot less money, we can help educate him in so many different ways because we have the time and resources to do so.

Sleep is such a big deal. Maybe it wouldn’t be if I were in my early 20s and am considering having another child, but now in my late 30s it is a consideration. I like sleep, I need sleep, and when I get enough sleep, everything else feels better in my life. I also like to have independence and now that our son is a toddler, it’s great because he can play on his own and then we can play together, and it allows me a bit more breathing room, especially compared to early on.
Speaking of early on, those newborn weeks, and months, were the darkest, hardest, most gut wrenching and challenging time I’ve ever had. It was compounded by the fact that my body was in such poor repair after the emergency caesar, slipped disc, sciatica, and DVT in my left leg, but also emotionally from having been in the hospital for nearly 3 weeks straight, having to take pain medication when I had set out to have a natural pregnancy and natural birth, and then not knowing if either of us were going to make it through the delivery, then the 5 weeks in the NICU never knowing if he is going to die, or if he can come home and all of it being so emotional, so bizarre, and so surreally horrible. I know I had, or perhaps still have undiagnosed PTSD. I have so much fear wrapped around pregnancy and birth and when I allow myself to really think about the whole process, I don’t want to go through it again. Even now thinking about how horrible, isolating, and confusing that stage was, brings tears to my eyes and my stomach goes in knots. I don’t know if I can actually do it again.

Then, and I know what ifs aren’t so good, but really, what if… what if the next baby has something that needs special attention too, what if it’s special attention beyond just the newborn phase, like a disability or something else? What if adding another child to our very cohesive family messes it all up and we really struggle? There’s no guarantee of who will come next and I know from my mother’s group that they really are their own person, a fine mixture of nature and nurture and sometimes it feels so very much like we just totally lucked out to have such an amazing, well behaved, kind child. He really is special, I mean, it’s like we have totally won the jackpot with our son, I’m thankful all the time. It was such a tremendously challenging start, but gosh, he’s really great. We’ve all started to really find our groove and I don’t know if I want to rock that boat.

The other part of this, which is a huge part, is that I am in my late 30s… and that means a deadline is looming. Maybe it’s not really by the end of the year, but I keep getting fooled into thinking that I have to do it now or never… that if we are going to have another child, if I am going to give birth to another child, then I need to fall pregnant by the end of the year, before I turn 38 and hope that my eggs are still nice and healthy to produce a nice and healthy baby.
I go back and forth with this decision. Having endometriosis just adds another dimension to it because the doctor said that if I have a baby then it puts the oestrogen on hold until after… so if I get pregnant, sooner than later is a good choice, because I *may* have to have a surgery again, this time to remove some of the endometriosis cells, and if it all goes south, then even more would need to be removed. I also have found out that the endometriosis cells have pretty much covered over my left ovary, which is likely why I get so much pain on that side, especially around my cycle time.

So it’s my body, it’s my mind, and it’s my emotional health that all needs to be in consideration ALONG with my own family dynamics. It isn’t a straightforward thought, and honestly since I was deadset against having children when i was younger, I didn’t have the whole dream of a big family after a big white wedding, that simply wasn’t me and wasn’t my life plan, so it’s not like I can just fall back on some projection that I’ve already made. Well, expect that one image that came out of no where when I was living in Brazil… it was so far away from where I was in my life, but I knew it was what I was needing in my life… and in that there was a house on some land with veggies, fruit trees, animals, a natural water source and the ocean nearby, with me, my husband and two little people… two. I don’t know where it came from, it had shocked me at the time… so part of me feels like I need to fulfil this. Maybe I just need to focus one step at a time on my health and well being and then worry about whether or not to have children after that… Gosh I just don’t want to miss that boat, if that’s the boat we really do want.

 

Shaking my head. Still not clear.

Eating and Sexy Time

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Earlier I was joking with my husband that if we have sweets in the morning, then we wouldn’t have sexy time later. Just a simple cause and effect, if and then situation. He was baffled and responded “Now you tell me after all these years” and I really laughed.

The idea that if you are satisfying your cravings with sugar instead of physical touch and orgasms, then it’s already done. The craving is satisfied. It’s like food takes the place of sexy time. Also in the same way that you don’t want to have sexy time if you are full. You want to lounge, you want to switch off in a passive way.

Nothing about sexy time with my husband is passive.  Although I was partially joking. We did have to prove the theory wrong. I daresay that if we didn’t set out to prove it wrong, then it would have held more weight!

The Name Game

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What’s in a name? Is it the name that makes the person or is it the person who makes the name? Does the vibration of the name really matter? Does the numerology really play an important role in that vibration? Does giving a child an “older” name weigh heavily on them? Does having a name that starts with an “A” automatically make them first to be called up and hence more available for leadership?

When we thought we might have a girl, we had already decided on a name that we both liked and that we felt could be a part of our life easily. However, now that it’s certainly a boy, that task has become a paramount effort! We’ve sat with these names so far: Alister, Alec, Riley, Theodore/Teddy, Abraham/Abe, Apollo and are still looking. I love when the name has some kind of significance. Would naming our child after Abraham Lincoln who was one of the greatest American Presidents who abolished slavery and forever changed the history of my homeland too big of a name to step into? Or would it lead to inspiration because Abraham Lincoln was such a stand out character and led his life with such high integrity?

My hope is that we will raise this child in a way that he is confident in who he is, regardless of his name. That he will be creative, generous, kind, strong, and gentle. That he will be a mixture of both my husband’s characteristics, mine, and of his as he develops them himself. That he will carve out his own sense of self in this world and be uniquely who he is. Inspiration comes from all areas of life and can also come from the name that one is given at birth.

It’s amazing how different it is to think about boy’s names versus girl’s names. There is a sense of weight that seems to be involved that wasn’t with the girl names. Is it because I had a father who developed a very tough shell in part because his name was a typical girl’s name? Honouring that “boy named Sue” complex that Johnny Cash famously sang about. Perhaps there is a sense of importance based on a name given as to what they will do in the world and how they will impact it.

Hopefully this name will come along and become apparent that it is the name of this being growing inside of me.

Too Much?

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Am I sharing too much of me?

Is that even a possibility?

I just want to be free

when life is filled with such uncertainty

I say it as I feel it

I’m always connected but I just never fit

I know I’m not the only one not engendered from a kit

like one of Nana’s uneven perfect stitches

that all come together with that common thread

turning patches into one big bedspread…

 

I put it out there

no other release can compare

I’m not always fair

but I always care.

 

Don’t bare too much soul

a kind of messenger said to me in a dream

you can’t take it back its not what it seems

then all of the sudden a night sky

turns into a ceiling full of beams.

but it is just me – I must remind –

the same yet different girl still confused by time

who enjoys writing thoughts in a rhyme

which makes her happy and feel quite fine…

Thought on Being Legally Bound…

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Is there any thing really wrong about being selfish, developing one’s self first and making that a focal point and continuing to do so as time progresses? How much does one really need to compromise in a relationship? Is a companion all that we can ever really seek in life?

Is there really just one person who will fulfill that gap when you need it? Is that even possible? Can we just get what we need from other people when we need it? Take only what we need and give, if we can, what they are in need of in return? Or further, just give what we need to give, what we can give…

A continuing thought… most likely spurred because I myself have found that I am legally bound, granted in another country, however, still legally bound and in the midst of breaking free from something I shouldn’t have really entered in the first place…where I allowed legal hoops and repercussions to scare me into thinking that I needed to be married to someone whom I did love and was in a relationship with in the said foreign country… masking it with the thought and optimism of love while knowing that if the legal ramifications and country laws were not as they were I wouldn’t have entered…  

Returning to the thought… with divorce in the US being 1 in every 2 marriages ending, doesn’t that mean that we are not as tied into religion as we were? Specifically California having the highest rate of divorce… doesn’t that reflect the lax religious views here? Doesn’t that also lead to the idea that we are more inclined to do what makes us happiest, even if that entails divorce, ending the religious institution of marriage that society tells us we should enter.

Further with divorce, how is it that we are supposed to feel so guilty about it? It is just a religious institution, and if I am not a strict follower of religion and my life is not ruled by religion, should I feel guilty? Should I feel guilty if I no longer feel the way I once did? Should I feel guilty that I have grown into a different person? I don’t think that guilt does me any good at all… why should I take it on when I am not obligated?

It is only my life to live. Shouldn’t I do what makes me happiest in this world? My world is only what I make it and if the person who I am next to doesn’t fit into what I believe I need next to me, is it wrong to be selfish and change the environment? We are all individual anyway… who is to say that the other person will ever be so much like you that you truly can grow old with only them? If I feel like I am on my own path to do the right thing and I realize that includes freeing myself from the bonds of those kinds of relationships, then shouldn’t I do it? Won’t it, in the long run, make the world a better place because I am doing what makes me happiest, what I feel is the best thing I can do for myself to help create this environment of happiness?

Why is it that our society forces us to be legally bound in order to have rights like health care? Health care should be a given right for any citizen living in the world’s most powerful and influential nation. So if you have to get married to have health care, that means that religion and capitalism are tied since health care seems to be totally revolving around money now? Is that a fair assumption?

I can definitely say that I will be more cautious when entering any kind of contract in the future, but in our society doesn’t it almost seem like it is inevitable in order to have rights? Is this where the gay/lesbian rights come in… how unfair that society makes us do this anyway for heterosexual couples, let alone homosexual ones, it is almost like a double blow… isn’t it? Or is it just the same… people who have a different outlook and who just want to love and have rights while living within their own bubble in our current society?

Spark the Light

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How to spark the light… the intellectual light in the dark? You can’t just point out and say “this is it.” There is a process of learning, thinking involved that eventually creates a revolution in one’s mind that creates the spark. That spark hopefully leads to light and it all has to start somewhere, but it has to be discovered individually – by one’s own merit – by one’s own way –  that’s the only way for anything to have a full and major effect upon one’s life.

The Truth About Cats and Dogs

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I just watched a movie with new eyes that I have loved since the first time I watched it over ten years ago. The Truth About Cats and Dogs is a wonderfully clever and truthful film. Granted I usually do overthink and dive into ideas head first these days, leaving little room to just laugh, with today being no exception. I wish it weren’t so, I wish I didn’t always read into what I am experiencing, but I will keep doing this until I stop. 😉 

So the beautiful blond Uma Thurman plays a very sweet, misdirected, loveable, yet dumb girl while Jeanne Garafalo plays the opposite role as the nondescript brunette with brains, wit and intellect. There is a lot of truth, I hate to say, in this very cliche casting and line of thought really. Then, oddly enough, I am relating it a little bit further that the beautiful blond is like the best friend companion who is always happy to see you and makes you feel good because they feel good to be around you. I then take the nondescript brunette as being more like the cat who is more complicated and does her own thing, finds her own amusements and develops in a completely different way. 

I have thought a lot about this idea of how one’s outward beauty dictates their life experience. I especially realized how my outward appearance – my white skin, my tall stature, my long blond hair and my blue eyes drastically impacted my experience while living in Brazil, a country with such a mix of nationalities mainly of Latin and African descent. I know that my appearance helped to shape my personality. I know that my personality shaped how I have handled and continue to handle things in life. I know that my life would be very different if I didn’t look the way that I do. Just as if I wasn’t born in America, or in 1980, or in California, or a girl. It all makes up how I am in life. 

So, with that said, I know that I cannot pinpoint exactly why I am the way I am because, like everything it seems, there are so many facets that should be considered that make up who I am, where I am and why I do the things that I do. I feel awkward with what I am about to say as I fear the perception that I am arrogant, but because I am attractive I know that I have had an advantage in my life, particularly when it comes to social aspects. Attractive people are, as I can see it, easier to socialize with, easier to deal with and just easier in most cases all around. There are the assholes and the bitches of course that value attractiveness above intelligence thus letting it all go to their head and think that everyone should worship them, but the majority are not that way. 

So, there was a part in the movie that basically said that dogs are always happy to see you and don’t say… ah… yeah, my owner has left now it is time for me to write a novel, instead they wait until the next time the owner comes back. They go to those who will pet them and aren’t selective as cats can definitely be. They are easy to please and aren’t too picky about who loves them as long as someone loves them.

Sure dogs can be complex. Sure attractive people can be complex, in fact, they usually are, but in a different way than less attractive people, I think. Am I ridiculous to even make this comparison? Maybe. But as one who has seemingly moved from one relationship to the next with other attractive people, is it fair to say that I am like a dog in that sense? How about my cat like distance that is inevitable? What about that side of it… complex… always is I guess. I guess this is why it is good to think about such comparisons. How can I ever know about someone else’s complexity when I am just trying to figure out my own though… it certainly does make me think about being more selective on who I allow to pet me.

Consumption and Bliss?

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Joseph Campbell says that we should “Follow Your Bliss”. He is right. Finding what makes us happy and going for it sounds like a pretty simple idea, right? If it is so simple, why are so many of us just trying to be like one another? Why are so many of us unhappy, overweight, stressed out, overworked and in debt? Why is it so hard to do what makes us happy?

We are so consumed with the idea that we need to be the best at everything we do. We consume everything in major quantities. Spending money, mostly that we don’t even have, unnecessarily in order to make us happy, which never really happens and further fuels the cycle of wanton consumption. We are so obsessed with keeping up with the Jones’s that we lose focus and sight of our own personal wants and needs. We are a media ruled society and believe most of what we see… but that isn’t the reality, not for everyone.

We want to earn the most amount of money in the shortest amount of time. We want everything right now and do not know what it means to work, to really work for something any more. We are so lost that, of course, we cannot say that we generally follow our bliss. When we never take the time to look inside of ourselves, to find out what really makes us tick, how can we ever truly know what does make us tick?

Looking like our Neighbor

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Since we cannot choose our genes and we didn’t have an option, is that why we are sooo outwardly focused now? Why are we so interested in our outward appearance when most of us cannot help how we look. Of course there are the extreme people for one reason or another that surgically change their appearance, but for the rest of us… why are we so focused on how we look instead of how we feel?

I guess how we feel, in this climate, is directly linked to how we look. Especially since we are forced to be so consumed with the idea of “perfection”. We spend billions each year on cosmetics to look like everyone else, to help boost our self esteem but does it really work? Just because we look the same or similar on the outside doesn’t mean we are the same on the inside. What about looking inward and accepting our own natural beauty? What about accepting how we look and moving on to bigger and more important things?

Let’s look at health… internal, spiritual, mental and physical. What about those? Doesn’t health make us happy? Doesn’t happiness make us healthy? Self love is totally involved in this yet is overshadowed usually by the desire to look a certain way, to fit in with the crowd.  Why do we want to look like everyone else in the herd instead of cherishing our differences? We are not cookie-cutter versions of one another… we are all so individual, yet for some reason strive to look like our neighbor.