Milestones

{This post was written last week, before everything went to hell in a hand basket. It feels important that I mention that.}

Mali recently wrote a post about experience, and she mentioned that once she read an infertility blogger say that after the birth of her second child she was all done with major positive milestones in her life, and that all she has to look forward to were the negative ones (like divorces and deaths).

I’m pretty sure that blogger was me.

If it wasn’t me, I’m sure I wrote a post about that after my son was born, at least once. I can’t remember when or even where (it is probably on my old, old blog and I am not taking the time to comb through those posts – what a rabbit hole). And the thing is I remember having those thoughts and feelings and I think I have a decent recollections of what I said in the post, so I thought I’d do a bit of a follow up.

I absolutely do remember writing something like that. I remember feeling something like that. My mid twenties to my mid thirties felt like such a monuments time. I was checking off all the boxes I had been worried would be left unchecked, and I was incredibly relieved that I was married with two children in my mid thirties. This was literally all I wanted for my life, at least it was at the time.

Perhaps that is why I felt I had passed up all my milestones. But it was probably other things as well, like the fact that I was earlier to do all that stuff than my close friends (because I was afraid of being infertile before I even had sex thanks to my mom’s history and my own amenorrhea), and I knew they all still had that to anticipate.

{And let’s not forget that I am someone who struggles enough with comparing myself with others that I left ALL FORMS of social media except for blogging around this time and NEVER WENT BACK. Clearly, I am someone who looks externally for validation that should be coming from within.}

Maybe it was because I chose my profession mostly as a “thing to do so I could still be with my kids a lot,” and not because I was necessarily passionate about it (which, by the way, is a horrible reason to choose a profession – I don’t recommend it) . I’ve never felt a big pull to any professional calling and that has always felt like a fault, or character flaw of mine (I can’t tell you how many messages my generation got about following our bliss and living our passion), so I didn’t readily value the work I would do moving forward. This is something I still struggle with to some degree.

I believe at the time my marriage wasn’t super strong. It wasn’t bad, but my husband and I had a lot of work to do. It’s sad to say, but I don’t think, at that point, I really looked forward to a lifetime with my husband. We felt like co-parents more than even partners or friends. Emotionally, we were too exhausted to work on our relationship.

At that point I had no big goals to work toward or accomplish. I felt stuck in a lot of areas of my life. Work felt like something I had to do to make money, not because it was meaningful to me. I had flirted with ramping up my writing but realized that wasn’t something I really loved either, and I was letting that dream go. I had a few close friends, but I could sense those friendships were floundering. (They imploded not long after.) I guess I just felt like I didn’t have any big life events to anticipate.

I think really, I wasn’t that happy at that point of my life, and I was realizing that there wasn’t any big life event left to make me happy. I thought getting married and having kids would give my life ULTIMATE MEANING, and that after I had those things I would be FOREVER CONTENT. I’ve spent a lot of the last six years (decade really) coming to terms with the fact that contentment has to be something I find inside myself, not in my family or anything else.

That is not to say that my family doesn’t make me happy. They do. They absolutely do. There is not a day that goes by (at least not many) where I don’t actively feel grateful for what I have. Because I really do have everything I ever wanted.

But I appreciate it all now, much more than I did back then, because I’ve done some soul searching about a lot of things, and I’ve learned that once you hit a certain point in your life (like, the point where you have everything you thought you wanted) contentment is choice you haven’t to actively, not a guaranteed outcome.

I’ve spent the last few years thinking a lot about my job, about whether or not I’m happy there and whether or not I feel fulfilled. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m as happy and fulfilled there as I would be anywhere. I can skate by when that is what I need and I can challenge myself when I need something more. I am proud of what I do at my job and I know there are ways I could expand my professional repertoire if I really want to.

Things are happier at home too. My husband and I have done A LOT of work to get to a place where things feel equitable enough that resentment is not a third party in our marriage. My husband and I are partners and friends now, and I genuinely look forward to spending the rest of my life with him (if we are lucky enough to have that).

I don’t think much about milestones anymore. I’m lucky that the women I “talk” to every day (mostly on a text chain) are in basically the same place as me in life, and we’re all just trying to make it work. I haven’t been on social media in ages so I’m not seeing the happy shots of the smiling kids, or the perfectly framed meal someone made, or the beautiful garden they landscaped. Basically I’m not comparing someone’s brightest moment to my lackluster every day existence, which makes me appreciate my every day existence more. My kids are older and don’t require EVERY MOMENT of my time. I can make the space in my schedule to practice martial arts, or take a time-intensive professional development class, or go out with my friends (back when that was a thing we could do). And I have good friends to go out with. My life is full and I am, for the most part, happy. The idea that I only have sad milestones left feels absurd.

Well, maybe not that absurd. I mean I am turning 40, and my parents are looking so much older than I ever imagined they would be. Two girl friends of mine are getting divorces, and another one lost a parent last year. I do feel like I’m entering a different phase of my life, one that will look a lot different than my 20s and 30s did. But I don’t believe it will be defined by loss and losing. I know a lot of other happy, positive things, are waiting for me too.

I appreciated reading Mali’s post, and being reminded of who I was back when I wrote those words about milestones (if it really was me she was referring to!) It’s nice to take the time to recognize where I was and how far I’ve come. (And less nice, but important, to reflect on how my words about my own experience made other people feel about their lives.) I really am a more content person than I was when I wrote that, and I hope I’m more sensitive when I write about my life. It’s nice to know people can change. I hope I keep changing in these kinds of ways.