This was the writing prompt:Write the 12 key scenes that would need to be in the movie of your life and then pick one scene and write it out.
Here’s what I wrote:
I don’t want to write about this. I don’t want to write about this. I don’t want to write about this. I DON’T WANT TO WRITE ABOUT THIS!!!!!!!!!!!
Resistance. Re-sis-tance.
Resistance. Re-sis-tance.
(Think Tradition from Fiddler on the Roof)
How many times must I review my life? Think about my life? Deep dive into my life? Sometimes I feel I’ll sink if I go down that path again. Isn’t it enough I lived all this the first time? How many times must I examine what was from another angle? I’ve done this too many decades and so what? Sure, I’ve learned skills but my issues remain my issues. AFGE’s continue, although not as often.
What is an AFGE, you may ask. Another Fucking Growth Experience. Yep, been there done that been there done that been there done that…
If I were younger, I might be embarrassed that it took me so long to realize that if you don’t learn your lesson it comes back. And each time, stronger. Each time disguised so you don’t recognize it immediately and must work harder before it is revealed to be another version of the lesson you thought you’d slipped through last time. Better to stop and learn it well. Or as well as you can.
What have I learned throughout my long life? I’ve learned that I know nothing. Each year, instead of feeling I’ve gained more knowledge and wisdom, I recognize the vast remarkableness of this world and life. I am yet a small pebble with a vision limited by my learning, by my … shit, I can’t remember the word I want. More proof of what I know, or should I say of my receding knowledge.
Being in an older body is, I believe, life’s greatest teacher. A remarkable, demanding, humbling professor. And you can’t know this when you are young. You can’t. Youth does not teach you what it means to be in a declining body that is closer each day to nonexistence. You can’t know until you live something. Anything. You can imagine, but that’s different than riding this tiger.
Someone said, “With age comes wisdom, but it’s a lousy tradeoff.” That’s for sure.
Would I be young again? Hell, no. Well, unless you’d allow me to keep everything I’ve learned so far about gratitude and living. Then I might go. Might because I don’t know. Life is like the story of the Monkey’s Paw or the caution, “Be careful what you wish for.” I believe in the law of unforeseen consequences.
Paradigm, that’s the word I wanted four paragraphs ago. Funny how things pop into our brains. Funny but not in the ha ha way sometimes. And I’m certainly not laughing, yet somehow, I’m amused. Or do I mean bemused? Probably a little bit of both.
So, here I am, riding the tiger of my body while watching the lions and tigers and bears gnawing at my husband’s. I can’t see it on the outside, other than how skinny he is. They’re tearing at his insides. Taking away and adding. Taking away a good portion of his small intestine. Adding blood clots in this liver.
Golden years? Not. How about a wee bit tarnished? Challenging. Demanding. Demanding every bit of knowledge and wisdom and learning I’ve gathered up throughout the years as I’ve struggled to rebuild my life over and over again.
That’s life. Meeting challenges. Working hard sometimes to find gratitude, or Happiness In The Storm as Dr. Wendy Harpham wrote.
Thank goodness for writers who took the time to share their learning with us. They’ve offered me paths. They’ve offered me words and ideas to feed hope when I feel anything but hopeful. They’ve challenged me to challenge my own way of thinking and to open my heart—again and again and again.
I don’t want to outline my life. I’ve lived it. I’ve written about it. Enough already. At least for today. Tomorrow I may want to write about it yet again. Of course, I am writing about my lifewhenever I write, and certainly, that’s a requisite of writing memoir. I’m about 75% through my second memoir, a story so different than my first book that you’d hardly recognize both are me. Except for one thread that pulls itself through everything—my dead father.
I can thank writing for showing me his presence and impact. I’m not sure I would have known if it weren’t for writing. I remain astounded that someone who was part of my life for such a short time—he died in 1961 when I was 12—has been present all along. I think his impact was stronger than my mother’s, who lived until 2005, when she was days away from reaching her 91stbirthday.
They say life is strange. I’d like to add, “You have no idea.”