TheBanyanTree: Copy Cat

[NancyIee at aol.com]

Maria,

Your crisis doesn't really abate as time goes by.  I'm decades older than 
you, and I'm STILL in some sort of crisis that began in "mid-life." (or perhaps 
as early as adolescence.)

My kids were grown and gone and everything I was became obsolete. I had other 
interests, friends, goals, but my main life for thirty years was child-care, 
teen counselor, college prep, and wedding planner. The kids were my life and 
now they have gone on to become fully occupied adults, and I am . . . . .  . 
.what?  I am Grandma, but that is not the same. I delight in another generation 
of children that are connected to me, yet other parents control their lives 
and guide their little feet. I get the cookies and weekend overnight duty on 
occasion, but that is not enough to "fill" me.

After kids, my marriage, when I really had the time to look at it again, was 
not what I thought it to be. I was "Mom" and after that, there was not really 
enough to anchor me. I wanted to travel, to explore, and I did. I moved on 
alone, and so the marriage sort of faded away. Sad testimony to nearly half a 
century of what I thought was wedded bliss. How I meant it to be. Perhaps my 
angst wouldn't wait to see if there was something salvageable. I had to be free, 
to start over, if that was needed.

I am starting over. The angst doesn't lessen. I still don't have roots, 
though I have friends, a new location I really like, a life that is overfull at 
times. (Do we intentionally overbook our time in some sort of seeking frenzy?) I 
am happy, yet I am not. I am satisfied, but I still lack something. I am free, 
yet so engaged in things I make my own prison of duties and dates. I changed 
my life, but the emotional leashes I made myself still have me clinging to a 
"something" left behind.

I am living up to my age, slowing down in a few areas, but speeding up in 
others, letting my hair color grow out to the appropriate grandma grey, yet, 
somewhere, I am still a searching teenager, still looking for the passion I always 
thought was the main part of life, still trying to figure out what I want to 
be when I grow up.

I just want to be worth something,  to matter, to do something important.