fifty-fifty

I am standing on the edge of my 40s, hands clasped, watching as the wheel spins. What will my fifties bring? Where will I land? How did I get to fifty so fast? Whaa?

Every decade-turn of the wheel seems eventful, a move up a ladder, a slide down a snake. Okay, maybe not every decade although at 10 I *did* get an ice-skating Sindy with the removable skates so, you know, not without merit.

A lot happened between 10 and 19. Young adulthood bruised me. If “hidden homeless” had been on my bucket list, I was a precocious early achiever. I tried to end my life. (Spoiler alert: not very successfully). I fell into a cycle of minimum wage jobs, friends’ spare put-you-ups and a merry-go-round of rooms-to-rent. Before my second decade was up, I’d spend a couple of birthdays alone thinking “Christ, is this it?” Being a newly-escaped Catholic, this was a legitimate question. Any prospects I possessed were hidden so far under a bushel, you'd need a depth charge to find them. I still wanted to die though not as actively. Then at 20, I got a job/placement/student visa to become an au pair in Boston. It quietly saved me, the seeds of new possibilities and friendships, were being sown. I learned to live with living.

By 30, I was settled back in England and had, improbably, got myself a career in television. Driven to improve my lot, my progression was clear and relentlessly, if naively, pursued. I was living with a wonderful Australian man and had recently realised he wasn’t The One. It was hard to step away from the shelter of love, kindness and security I so badly wanted, and he unquestioningly offered. I felt like a failure - people I loved thought so too. I took a leap into my thirties single, hopeful and child-free (exactly the way I would end up leaving it) but somewhere in my late thirties my world came crashing down. Redundancy was not part of The Plan and when it came, I emotionally and physically collapsed in on myself. It was frightening, I had a hefty mortgage and no safety net. For the first time in years, depression pulled me under. I was trapped in an undertow of my own dark thoughts yet (little seeds) somehow found my way to a GP. He sent me off with a prescription for anti-depressants and an appointment with a counsellor. As soon as I could, I came off the pills but I continued to see my therapist for the next two years, only stopping to leave the country. One day, I thought, I’d like to help someone the way he helped me.

I picked myself up very slowly. I found work here and there, just enough to keep my head above water but the ambition, that had been driving me, packed up and left. I wasn’t tired of the job itself but I was tired of the plate-glass office-spaced three-ring circus that accompanies it. Was this all that there was? I bobbed in a sea of existential angst and at night, tsunamis ripped me from the shores of sanity in my sleep.

40 threw a lifebuoy of sorts: a new job in Northern Ireland. Long story short: the job was a dead-end but I liked my new home, it was bruised but not beaten. (I know a kindred spirit when I see one). During this professional purgatory, something special happened:  I met a man who I could love and who loved me back and that was good. No, it was more than good, it was bloody miraculous! I had Rob, a place to call home and had made new friends easily, it all just felt right. The crappy job didn’t matter. The wheel continued to spin.

We could stop here, maybe. Maybe that would be neater?

You see, things didn’t Happy Ever After. There were no sunsets to ride off into, no credits roll or power ballad. 

I struggled to find work. I lost my new circle of friends in a direct hit during a divorce war. I wrestled with demons, the inner kind. The existential crisis returned as I realised that all love affairs (and poorly chosen friendships) end badly, eventually. I would have to accept Rob’s mortality and my own and everyone else’s. Love comes with inbuilt loss, it’s part of the deal, the rough end of an existential pineapple no-one can escape. 

The wheel just keeps on turning.  

In my late forties, the need to accept the loss of my old career and, let's face it, my part in it, had turned into finding new ways of earning money. I was Mr Benn-ing myself into new roles, ones I might learn to love (or tolerate) to get my bank balance healthier…will I ever love anything as much as storytelling? My bank manager hoped so. And so did I. 

I got used to rejection letters. My skill-set was Liam-Neeson-particular and hard to see where those skills might fit. Still, I was willing to try my hand at anything which is why I can now silversmith and know the best way to bathe a nervous dog (thanks Chris, you also taught me the value of good wellington boots). It was working an early shift at the kennels when I had an epiphany of sorts. I was hosing down some particularly stubborn poo and singing to myself when I got the giggles which rolled into laughter, like proper, I-can’t-breathe, belly laughter. It came out of nowhere. It was coming out of my nose. I was spraying everywhere and now crying and laughing because….because….because I couldn’t quite believe how much my life had changed or how okay I was about it. I had slid down the longest snake – but here I was being okay! I was a dispassionate tourist at the top of my own life marvelling at the distance between where I once was and where I was now. This was okay! I laughed some more. I was hosing dog poop for money and the world hadn’t gone to cheese. 

Now I sit, on the edge of 50. The wheel’s turning, I’ve rolled my dice. Fingers crossed, I’m a few months shy from being a newly qualified integrated, person-centred, psychodynamic counsellor. (You can just call me a counsellor.)  

I don’t entirely know why I am writing this but if there is a point, it’s this: it’s okay to stumble, to feel lost, to fail un-spectacularly, to wonder what’s the point and wonder if you can carry on once you’ve slid down the board. Things change. For good or bad, whatever’s going on right now, this will pass, the wheel will keep on turning, that's a promise and a threat – it makes us want to bottle the good stuff, it means we can get through the bad.

What will my fifties bring? I have no idea but I think I’ll be okay with it and for those times when I’m not, I’ll find a helping hand to steady my ladder and wait for the wheel to turn.