Birthday Blues

I am 47 today.

In the words of Anne Lamott, born tomorrow, an Aries who has been put on this planet just to remind me who I want to be when I finally grow up, “God, what a world. What a heartbreaking, terrifying freak show.”

I open the news every morning and I cringe, I shrivell in a little tiny ball, ready to crawl back into bed and not ever open my eyes again. There are people torn apart  by bombs, ethnical cleansing in Africa and Asia, and who knows where else. I had coworkers who grew up in Venezuela and told me stories about putting mattresses in the windows to shelter them from bullets. I read about women raped and submitted into bondage every second of every day, by the hundreds and thousands. A new book that just came out proclaims that we’re raising now “The Trayvon Martin generation: a generation of kids who face death every day. Kids who know about death before they start living.” How do you start your day and keep finding purpose with this?! 

We have white supremacy and terrorism at home. Forget fighting terror against America. Whatever happened to fighting terror right here, at home. Terror from our next door neighbor, our kids, our teachers. We have people smacking flight attendants for doing their jobs. We have kids hitting teachers in school with little more of a consequence than a slap on the wrist or a shrug. We have world leaders primitively and cruelly fighting just like we’re in the Middle Ages right in the middle of Europe. William Wallace of Scotland would be amazed how little we've come since his time. We have NATO and the EU, we have UNESCO and UNICEF and the UN; and we also have Putin. 

I have three friends fighting breast and head cancers. My own mother has been battling cancer for five years and she’s going and going and going - with what energy, I do not know. 

I have friends who sleep in high-rise basements and metro stations in Ukraine to shelter from the constant bombings, because they could not escape the country - no one wanted to allow them to stay with two dogs. I have friends who have loved ones in Ukraine who might be  stuck there - because they put off leaving thinking they’re enough away from the capital and they'd be safe; now they might not be able to escape because there are no roads left. Because they are not safe, even far away from the capital. 

I have coworkers in Armenia who are sheltering Russians running away from oppression. In our daily meetings we start with things that they need to be able to put these people up - things like pillows and blankets. They talk about the hatred the Russians see abroad, the way they can’t use their credit cards and how they cannot get jobs because no one hires Russians in Europe, at large, or in the former Soviet republics. Everyone forgets that they ran away from the same things we're sanctioning their leaders for.

A friend’s mom, from work, went to the hospital to treat a foot infection with a small surgery. She died of cancer (which she didn’t know she had) three weeks later. My family members, my loved ones are coming out of Covid and we don’t know quite yet what this means in the long run for them. I have friends from work who are battling long Covid and some who have 30 year olds in their families on dialysis for life because of long Covid. 30! And the CDC tells us we can unmask, the numbers look better. 

We have no current vaccine that fights the current variants. We have no treatment for Covid. Much of the world is not boosted yet. Some have never been vaccinated. They said in the news that the continent of Africa will not be all vaccinated till 2028! 2028, people! But Covid is over. Unmask! Unmask on planes! Half of the US Congress seems sick with it right now, but unmask away, I guess. They are 30! With 3 little kids under the age of 10. They were the only income earner in the house but now they are on dialysis and in need of a kidney all because of this stupid, unfair, unrelentless, smart virus we’re (still!) dealing with. (Sorry, not sorry, CDC!)

I adopted an older cat with a history. I wanted to do some good. I wanted to give someone who is hopeless some hope. It turns out she is sick. She will be forever sick and need constant care and medication just to survive. 

My husband went to the doctor the other day with a toothache. He came home after a “small surgery”. When is this pain going to stop? The cutting? The bleeding and all ... This world is breaking my heart. Chipping away at it every second. 

I woke up this morning, on my birthday, to go to a memorial for a dear colleague, another plucky Aries woman who made a difference in the world of journalism who I was lucky to work with a decade ago. Another one of those that came into this world to show me who I want to be when I grow up. We talked about death and God and how peaceful death is. And mostly we talked about life. Her life and what she left behind for others. It woke me up. It was truly the perfect birthday present, considering this world today and the crass awareness we all live in. 

I wake up every day and read the news and honestly, I am not sure where to start walking. I have hope that Elon Musk will find some ways for us to live on other planets, because I don’t think there is a safe place here. (Yes, I am only half joking here). I have two citizenships and I want neither one, truly. The human condition is no longer a safe place. 

Yeah, the world around me is pretty grim right now ... and has been for a while ... 

And yet, today, on my birthday, I feel very strongly that I made out like a bandit in this life. 

I am sheltered and there are no bombs flying over my head. For now, although close, there are no bombs flying over my family’s heads in Europe, either. I have had the good fortune to choose who I married. Twice. I have had the good fortune and blessing to be able to get a divorce and leave an abusive marriage. To make that choice, when millions of women can’t. How lucky is that? I am reading a memoir by Madeleine Albright right now. One of her daughters is an international lawyer whose one of her first customers was a grandmother of 26 years of age. Just let that sink in for a minute. A grandmother. At 26. 

I have been able to get an education. As a woman, I have been able to choose where I went to school and do something I loved. I can read. I can write and I can speak two languages. I can write this blog and I am not scared they will lock me up. I just want to cry with joy for all this! 

I have been able to travel on four continents and learn from other cultures how to look at this life through the kaleidoscope of possibilities and not just through one lens. How lucky is that, you tell me?! 

I live every day with so much love and understanding, so much respect and peace at home that it makes me choke up. I am so blessed and so lucky I feel grossly guilty! 

I have a hearth full of birthday cards staring back at me now. And my cat just sat down, leaning painfully into me with a sigh. Best present I can think of yet.

I have managed to see 47 years of age when everyone has been telling me for 39 of them that I will never make it past 25, and after I made it to 26, that I'd never make it much longer ... There is a blessing bestowed on me that keeps showering  me with bliss.

The reason I am not crawling back in bed after reading news or emails or Facebook posts every morning is because we're supposed to stay in the pain. We're supposed to go through hell, and let it hurt us, and let it change us. This is how we change, and how we grow, and how we learn, and how we get to come out on the other end stronger, and more complete, and maybe, just maybe, even better.

I am 47 and feel like going on 90. I swapped my reading glasses all around the house today (I went from 2.00 to 2.75 in a hurry!), I feel old and slow, but I am still here - and old or not, I am still living my life and trying to keep fulfilling the purpose I was put on this planet for. I hope I know what that is. But like I found from my friend’s memorial today, they might realize what it was when I am gone. And that would be OK. As long as that purpose is fulfilled. 

Also in the words of Anne Lamott: “I have warm socks and feet to put in them”. Today, in this cold, unfriendly, deserted day, the 9th day of April, and the 99th day of the year 2022, I am infinitely grateful for this! 

We drove past a billboard today that read “Hope is not canceled”, and I felt a twinkle in my eye. Hope is never canceled. I’ll live to that thought!