42

I'm now the age of the meaning of life.

Where the magic happens

These past couple weeks — the weeks since my 42nd birthday, really — I have found myself extraordinarily disoriented.

But for once, I’m disoriented in a net positive way rather than the usual painful, desperate way, the way that makes me feel that all I can do is intricately map every part of an awful maze that I can’t get out of at worst, and distract or numb myself from the mapping job at best.

I feel…happy. Not quite calm yet — I’m jumpy and out of practice with the absence of anguish — but I can see the calm in front of me, just a few steps away.

The biggest change was getting a job. Like, a real job, with a schedule and salary and benefits and paid time off that lets me expense work equipment. What a difference! It’s still at home and online, and I’ve now got a fancy office space in the previously empty “ballroom” area, as I call it (I have a lot of questions for the people who designed this house). I know exactly how much I’ll be getting paid and exactly when those payments will land, which is literally life-changing in a way far greater than I was expecting.

Because I already have a wonderful partner, a wonderful family. My friendship cup runneth over. My dog is adoring and obedient. I live in a beautiful house in a beautiful city. I’m physically healthy. I get to be creative, and am admired for my creativity by at least a handful of people, which is enough.

But man, there’s just no substitute for economic stability when you live in a society where that determines almost everything about your life. That was the missing ingredient, and from one day to the next, it’s improved my life tenfold.

Before getting this job, I hadn’t taken more than a full day off from working in years; I lived in a constant state of worrying about when and if the next gigs would show up, and if they would do so in time and in a great enough amount to meet my expenses for the following month, knowing that any event that might take away my ability to work would result in hitting the floor, nary a safety net in sight, real fast.

Depression and anxiety were the results, which for many people, myself included, are circumstantial first. Obviously a lack of stability will make you depressed and anxious.

If the US cacophony that arises after every mass shooting were sincere in its insistence — “The problem is mental health!” — they’d work like mad to make economic stability, which really is simply dignity, for as many citizens as possible the issue to solve.

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This is my second weekend since starting, and I’m not even sure what to do with myself now that I’m not worrying about chasing down more jobs to meet next month’s expenses. It’s taken care of. Solved. Wow.

I wonder if this kind of lightness is the feeling people have when they describe being saved by Jesus.

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The second biggest recent change for me was a diagnosis of ADHD. I’m not hyperactive (obviously), but I am extremely distractable and spacey, which has its merits but can be a problem when there are so many ways one must keep it together in this modern, capitalist world.

Another downside, especially for grown women, is lots of depression and anxiety, which came right back as soon as I weaned off the anti-depressants I’d been prescribed in late winter. The psychiatrist, who only tested me because I insisted following the certainty of the psycho-traumatologist I’d been seeing, prescribed medicine for that instead (don’t worry — not the addictive stimulant kind).

It’s made a big difference. I truly can focus better on what I’m doing (essential for learning the ropes at this new job, which feels only slightly less hard than trying to learn Spanish and how to drive a stick-shift car simultaneously). I no longer feel such a desperate pull of addictive behavior, which typically would drive me to eat or spend or scroll impulsively and obsessively. For once, I feel kind of chill, a feeling that used to be interchangeable with depression but now is not.

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It’s been a year of terribly uncomfortable growth, tearing through a dark forest with thorns everywhere. You can try to focus on the positive and the beauty all you want, but you can’t escape being poked with every step. It’s exhausting.

But maybe, just maybe, I’m coming out on the other side. I’ve seen glimpses of light along the way: I finally got a car, for example, and I finally got a divorce, two big items on my list of things that needed to happen this year.

Now, I’m finally at the edge of a bright, sunny pasture, trying not to glance back at the forest too much lest I jinx myself and get pulled back into it somehow.

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One of my favorite books, one that sits by my bed and gets read or thumbed through over and over again, is Anne Lamott’s book Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.

It’s a small book that one of the pastors at my childhood church gave me after my mom’s memorial service, and it’s repeatedly given me just enough air and light in some tough, dark times (especially the “help” chapter).

But I always try to make the second prayer my go-to, the primary one. And now, I really, really mean it. Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou.