I was reading one of those surveys on somebody�s diary the other day... you know, the ones that make the rounds all the time and ask random personal questions like �what are you wearing right now?� and �who was the last person you kissed?� I was toying with filling it out until I came to the question �how old will you be in ten years?�

What an utterly depressing thing to be made to think about! I mean, of course I think about the fact that I�m pushing 40 (well, I�ll be 39 next month but that�s plenty close enough to get all glum about it, isn�t it? Wouldn�t want to get behind on my grueling agonizing-over-it schedule, you know.) Actually, I haven�t been as worried about 40 as I thought I�d be, but then I guess I typically tend to freak out over the �five� years anyway. 25 and 35 were much more of a shock to my system than 20 and 30. Probably because I always had high hopes for each new decade...

At 20 I was skinny, cute and newly-divorced; and while far from self-confident I still managed to be quite the flirt, attracting more than a few guys and even a couple of girls�an unparalleled opportunity to play the field that I wasted by hooking up with the second husband only days after getting rid of the first. Not that I�d done a whole lot of sit-down planning or anything, but my general vision for the decade was to get an education and find a career while managing to squeeze in as much sex and partying as possible. But money was always a problem, college fell through, and an unexpected pregnancy put an end to my all too brief career as a Hot Chick. I spent the rest of the decade struggling with finances, crappy jobs, family crises, difficult children, marital woes and depression.

I always meant to lose the weight, but I never had the time or energy to exercise or the money to eat right, and anyway, my life was in the shitter and eating was pretty much my only form of entertainment. There was nothing else to look forward to, except for payday when I might be able to squeeze out a little money for a trip to McDonalds or a box of Little Debbies. I weighed 160 pounds the day I delivered my daughter at the age of 23, and a size 16 dress was tight on me. I was horrified... I thought I was an absolute whale! But by the end of my twenties I was up to 230, a size 24 was now tight and I looked back longingly at the days I could squeeze myself into a size 16.

I did manage to get myself edumacated for a career as a secretary towards the end of those years, and I felt like that was my one and only positive personal accomplishment for the decade. Everything else had just been a matter of grimly hanging in there, hoping for better days. I knew that people I�d gone to school with had finished college�medical school, even�and had established careers and lived in nice houses they actually owned, and I felt like I was so far behind. Not in the sense of playing keep-up-with-the-Joneses, I never cared too much about that; but more in the sense of �look what I could have accomplished already if only I could have gotten my shit together.�

But with the kid finally in school, the brothers finally grown and moved out, and brand-new career path set out before me, I had high hopes for my thirties. They started out promisingly... I landed a half-decent job working for an HMO, and Dick got a promotion that raised our income up to almost but not quite comfortable. I managed to lose 70 pounds in just a few months... I was still heavy at 160ish but felt a lot cuter than I had for a long time. Dick and I were getting along a little better although there were still a lot of problems, and our sex life returned. For a little while, it looked like things were going to get on track. But then suddenly the kid�s behavior problems at home and school turned more serious, and Dick�s family had crisis after crisis that demanded his attention (it all fell on Dick because everyone was too intimidated to ask Dick�s able-bodied but lazy, excuse-making brother to pitch in and help out.) Between that and his new obsession with hunting, he was rarely home. The kid got kicked out of school. I quit my job to stay home foolishly thinking I could homeschool her (which cut our income in half;) and when she predictably refused to cooperate in being educated and the resulting stress and all the other problems became overwhelming, I escaped into the Internet and eventually into an ill-fated online affair. Shortly thereafter came a divorce, a new job, and swiftly thereafter the loss of that job, a series of really crappy temp jobs, a long-distance romance, depression, stress-eating, and a frighteningly quick return to 230 pounds.

From age 34 on, I embarked on a different path when I moved to Chicago. The last five years have been better but still very difficult in their own way. Turns out that a secretarial career is about as appropriate career choice for me as lumberjacking, and after a couple of false starts in school I�m finally heading in the direction of a career that, while it may be more suitable for my skills and personality, may not actually offer all that many job opportunities when all is said and done. I�ve been through a stressful long-distance separation from my kid and a stressful reuniting with her. There have been some downright crappy times in my marriage over the past few years, money has continually been a problem and instead of getting ahead we keep slipping backwards. I�m down one car thanks to being crashed into by an uninsured idiot a couple of years ago, and we�re in debt up to my husband�s eyeballs, which means I�m in way over my head considering I�m a foot shorter than he. The sexual peak I�d so looked forward to in my thirties never materialized. I never got any hornier or any hotter, and at the edge of 39 I feel more undesiring and undesirable than I ever have.

Progress has been made... the marriage thing is back on track, the kid is doing better, and I�ve enjoyed doing the school thing as well. But when I think about how old I will be in ten years, and the answer is 49... and then I think about how damn FAST the last 10 years went, and how, in spite of all my high hopes, I have spotted an alarming tendency in myself to just piss tens of years away without accomplishing a whole lot of anything... well, that�s just plain scary. There is no more time for me to waste if I ever want to have a slimmer body again while I�m still young enough to enjoy it. From what I see in my parents� generation, things start to fall apart with shocking speed in your 50�s. Even those who have taken care of themselves and still look pretty good (and we�re surrounded by young-looking 50-somethings in both our families) are being hit with potentially serious health stuff. And those that haven�t taken care of themselves? Well, let�s just say that the late 50�s are often not kind to those who haven�t been too careful about their health.

I know that no matter what I do there are no guarantees that the next ten years are going to be any better in terms of accomplishing things... in terms of having a life that is more than just drifting along from meal to meal until I die. But there are things I could do that would increase my chances of having a happier 40�s, 50�s and beyond, and I know what some of them are, and what some of them AREN�T, even if I still haven�t figured out everything about what I want my life to be.

So what is wrong with me, that I�m not doing them? I escape from my life and my problems on the Internet, in books and movies and TV and sleeping, and I tell myself it�s only temporary, when things settle down and I�m not so stressed I�ll be able to handle responsibility and planning and working towards goals again. But those times are so few and far between, and I even when they do come I never take advantage of them, because when things have sucked for quite awhile and then suddenly they don�t, well, I want to celebrate a little bit before I buckle down to serious stuff... go out to eat, spend money instead of save, spend all my free time playing and relaxing.... and then just as suddenly the good times are gone again and I�m no further ahead than before.

I�d really wish I could figure out how to make myself behave myself. You know how sometimes you can see so clearly the ways in which someone else is sabotaging their own life, and you just want to shake them and yell at them �Cut it out already! It�s YOU and all your goofy notions, skewed priorities, misguided sense of propriety, stupid excuses, basic laziness and unwarranted fears that are lousing up your life... so.... uh... stop doing that!� Yet when I tell myself that, why don�t I listen to me?

It�s not like I can�t see what I�m doing wrong... I have my blind spots I�m sure, but mostly I know that a lot of my problems I�ve brought on myself or made them a lot worse than they had to be by my own dumb reactions to them.

I�d like to end this up by saying that I�ve had some big epiphany and by god, from now on things are going to be different. But the fact that I�ve been sitting in front of the computer eating crap since 4:30 this morning doesn�t seem like all that great of a start.

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Last Five
Crappy job crap, weird neighbor, and someone whose baby I apparently want to have - 2006-05-08
Live from the dump - 2006-04-09
Kind of like a muzzle for your brain - 2006-03-29
...and then she fell ass-first into my cereal bowl - 2006-03-28
Playing catch-up - 2006-03-27

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