Plain Milk's Jug

I have been feeling strange lately. On one hand, I am making great strides towards the retirement of my career. I decided long ago your career retires. You don’t ever retire. I have reached the point where I will likely have nothing when I pass. Yet, I won’t be in debt, and I will live in comfort. Oddly, this is a comforting place to me. For years, I felt burdened by mortgages and vehicle loans, raising kids, 2 failed marriages. I used to feel like I would never be free and die with a minus sign in the ledger. Those repayments now done and finished, I am proud but humbled.

Yet, with this sense of completion, I worry about the price of a full life of experiences. Just how little I will end with, the realization maybe i didn’t hit my full potential economically. I manage to reconcile these feelings. I take time to remember the road that brought me here. There are immense joys, crushing defeats, and traumas. I cherish the sweetest moments, and the biggest adventures. I accept there were dark times. Perhaps too often, I readied myself to check out of the workforce and society. But in that darkness, I healed my wounds. The cost of following my own path, over professional focus, seems so very worth it to me.

I am not lonely. In fact, I am becoming more comfortable with the fact that I like independence. I realize that the reality of relationships, for a large percentage, were always and will always be transactional. Yes i would like companionship, but even that would be a LAT (living apart together) arrangement. I can’t stand the thought of negotiating what I eat. I can’t stand negotiating what I watch. I can’t stand negotiating what I do, with someone else. I am okay with that. I truly love myself and this sanctity will always prevail above all else for me. Self Love. Self Forgiveness. Autonomous Pursuit of Happiness.

My family has all but shrank, refined to only those who love me as I love them. Some turning their back, some cut off, some passed on. It has made me happier. I would rather reflect what a family should be with only a couple of members. I refuse to tolerate dysfunction in the name of head counts.

My looks have faded, the feathering of white whiskers becoming more apparent each shave. The wrinkles and lines mapping out my life on my face. With each new appearance of my age, I am more comfortable. I am happy with who I am. I am not concerned by what looks outward at everyone else. Obviously, I take care of myself, but not with the need for validation I once had. I prefer comfort to pomp, and have little concern about it.

Maybe this is what aging is, but it sure feels strange. I feel strange finding the most happiness at this point in my life. I am more at peace with myself in maturity than I ever allowed myself in youth. I am happy. there are no more crisis to attend to. this is life passed PTSD. My entire life, I have felt like an old person, and I am now finally feeling comfortable in my own skin