Warning. a ramble. A call for submissions wanted something not AI. They got it. All of the messy and real. They never picked it up, though, and life has been lifing and work has been worky, and I felt like looking at it again.
Since writing this, I am in the process of making changes for myself. Letting go of a life that pre-covid was happy and content and working well.
The last few years have had me treading water. I felt like a weight was on my ankles with the occasional hand wrapped around it, pulling me further down. Menopause hasn’t helped. The weight is starting to get lighter, though.
I signed a lease for a new apartment to have a space for myself for work and to get away on occasion. I sent in a new job description to negotiate a new title and salary that better aligns with what I am actually doing. My boss is supporting me, so I am hopeful something will come of that in the next month or two. No guarantees, and if not, I get to retire in 4 years and look for something else.
Maybe I can start swimming freely again soon.
A few months now living at 50. Yes, I said 50. It is a magic number. I think about it a lot. My father died at 59 of a heart attack, and most of my young life, I thought I would not make it to 60. Most of his family barely made it past that. With advances in medicine and understanding some of the choices my dad’s family made, I think I am safe. There may be more life ahead than I originally thought. I just have to figure out what to do with it.
I come to a point where I have started hoping and dreaming for more. (I love that word more. I use it a lot.) As someone with a husband and kids, from the outside, you might think, “What more could you want?” The thing is, for most of the thirty years I have lived with my husband, we have lived a more open and even polyamorous lifestyle. Like many in that lifestyle, I have dipped my toes into swinging, threesomes, foursomes, BDSM, and Kink, and a good amount of other stuff that has helped make life a little less ordinary. And I am appreciative of all the opportunities and privileges I have had living with him.
But as I get older, and especially after the lockdown of COVID, I find myself struggling in my environment mostly, but also wanting more of the extraordinary found in the ordinary.
Having no distance at all from my immediate family has me longing to choose a different type of life and connection. And I have found it here and there. I have enjoyed being a slave to a couple for a time, and I enjoy the idea of packing up and moving out and going somewhere new (like out of the country new). I have had a few long-distance online partners that have helped me fantasize about that, but when you find someone great, that distance can be a real bitch.
Whether we are talking about time or space or both, distance makes getting to know someone new much harder. It is difficult to try to connect to someone. Add to that trust issues from a lifetime of people breaking promises and lying about who they are, and it is difficult to piece out what is real and what is a projection.
But as one ex-partner taught me to do, journaling and reflecting can help you prepare for making those connections and being someone someone else wants to connect with. It can help you walk through who you are, but more than that, who you want to attract.
(Warning, sharp turn ahead)
Recently, I have had to take a break from getting to talk with my long-distance partner, or Daddy as I like to call him. Amidst this break, I sat with my kids on a random weekend and watched a movie they picked out. One of my kids is on a romcom kick and has been diving into older movies (no, not that old if you are a 50 like me.) I sat and watched Anna Faris, pre-divorced from Chris Pratt age, star in a cute dating film with Chris Evans, What’s Your Number?. As I watch her reach out to all her old boyfriends, worried she let go of the One, I remember Martin Freeman is in this. (You think I will launch into something about lost loves, but I’m not.)
I do not think there is a person alive who doesn’t know The Hobbit, and very few Americans who do not appreciate his role as a stand-in in the holiday classic, Love Actually. I don’t know why this British movie is more popular in America, but it is. I always forget about his role as Watson in Sherlock, but I am in the minority in this, I think. I know it will be good with Stephen Moffat writing, but I just haven’t taken the step to binge it. I should also probably mention that I connect with the world through movies and books. I know it is obvious at this point.
As I am watching him, I remember a few of the roles where he plays this same character. But I also realize how much he reminds me of my long-distance partner. I had thought it before when first seeing pictures of Daddy, but it is the accent, too. I love Daddy’s voice, and at this particular time, I was longing for the connection that I was missing with him. So seeing Freeman sparked something inside me. I mentioned how I connect to movies and books. Really, it is a love language, and as you can guess, I get a bit obsessive with it. I had already finished a book that Daddy said he would be reading, so I needed something to fill in the gap until he came back. Martin Freeman certainly fit the bill nicely. I started off slow, but honestly, there wasn’t a day that I didn’t watch a talk show clip, a show, or a movie with him in it.
What I wasn’t prepared for, though, was the way I watched him grow older and grow as an actor through the different types of roles he played. It was interesting how projecting him onto Daddy happened through this. I actually found it hard to go back and watch older movies like Swinging with the Finkles after seeing him in something like Miller’s Girl and Breeders.
Breeders especially made me reflect on my life as a mother going through menopause and thinking about how I have disconnected from life a bit. There were a lot of other things in the show that triggered me and gave me pause. What started as a distraction became time for major reflection.
Recent life events and the buildup of changes since lockdown made me consider another path. I think I have replayed several parts of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, reflecting on the man Freeman portrays there and in Breeders. This is not Tim from the Office. This is a man who may have been slightly hardened by life. He is someone who has lived through some shit (and aged well).
I wrestle with the direction I want to go now. Do I spend time treading water for a bit since I still have years of work and child rearing ahead, or do I take steps to be more proactive in creating a life for myself? In the last several years, I have missed the feeling of companionship mixed with physical intimacy, and I want that, but I can also wait until it is the right time and fit.
Thinking about these characters, though, that is the type of man I want. Someone who has lived through things and knows what they want. Someone who has had time to study people and understand who they are and accept others for who they are. Maybe someone not afraid to live for themselves and be happy and content in that. That is the direction I am trying to take for myself.
Now I just have to figure out how to show Daddy, he could be that man.
Lisa Gray 