I'm supposed to be writing.
That's a general given. I'm supposed to be writing in general and in particular right now as Nahanni is in Circle Care and I have a few hours 'off' before my audition. But I'm in a whirl and my mind can't seem to focus at all. I'm in the midst of myriad projects as usual but mostly I am boulversé by my day on set yesterday and can't think of much else.
I was shooting on Supernatural yesterday and I am so happy to be working again and I had a good time but I couldn't help but feel like a moment had passed me by. I felt...rusty. I felt...not myself. I felt...crappy. I just didn't seem to have the right head for it, I felt a bit wooden and that is very strange for me. I don't know how much of it was being off for so long and how much was a result of standing in front of two incredibly handsome guys who are now much too young for me and just feeling bad about that. I kept feeling like life, like my career, like my youth and my sexuality had somehow passed me by and yesterday was just a mirror held up to all of those fears and regrets for me. Now, of course I am not all washed up as I might feel, certainly there is much to be said for beautiful older women and all that. It's just that I don't think I adequately prepared myself for being the 'beautiful older woman'. I don't think I have let go of being the beautiful young ingenue and I felt wholly unprepared for the effect that realization was to have on me.
This is complicated stuff, this aging gracefully. I am trying to do so, but right now I feel like I could burst into tears in the middle of this Commercial Drive coffee shop just thinking about it. I think I might be starting a mid-life crisis and I'm really, really not in the mood. Last week I was moseying along, feeling pretty good about life, about a good start to the New Year, about being refocused and having a new objective and being married for what now amounts to 15 years (our anniversary of really coming together was on the 1st and I completely and utterly forgot). Now I feel like I am living in a sitcom about life in the latter half and I'm not finding it very funny. I feel like I've been used up and thrown away by the industry, by all the choices I made - especially the wrong ones, by all my desires and failures and...
And it feels pretty sucky.
I feel like a big baby right now, like I'd like to crawl up in the proverbial lap and have a little time out. It is absurd to be thirty seven (yes, I'm just admitting it) and feel finished, because I know that to be untrue, but by the same token, what the hell do I do now? When you have based your life and your life's work on your beauty (or lack thereof), your sexuality and your youthful enthusiasm, what do you do when they begin to fade? The obvious answer is that you grow and move on and you continue to live and strive and be beautiful in a new way, but that's all fine in black and white but less simplistic in practice. My darling friend and oft-relied upon spiritual touchstone who is in her 60's was describing herself with her new young lover as 'a hoochie mama!' and I am heartened by this notion, but somehow it doesn't seem to be rubbing off on me. I feel like a deflated balloon. On the show yesterday I was playing a publisher that the 'boys' go meet on one of their quests and in the end she is meant to pull down her pants to show her kindred tattoo and the boys quickly exclaim 'No! That's okay, we'll take your word for it!' and I felt in like an arrow in my woman's heart. I used to be the girl, and now I'm the...well, not the girl. I should feel greatly heartened by the handsome, green-eyed hunk Jensen Ackles calling the producer in LA and saying "There's no way I'd do that! She's hot!" -- but somehow I'm not. I have to be honest, I wanted him to flirt outrageously with me. I wanted him to touch my knee, ask me for a drink. I wanted to be wanted. Is that wrong? Is that unfair? I mean, obviously I am a mother and a wife, but above and beyond these things I am a woman and I am feeling like I've been put out to pasture. What do I do with this?
I think back to the days when writing on my blog I would opine about the intense adoration I felt for my little daughter, wondering how the honeymoon could end, and although she continues to be my little dream, she is beginning to push boundaries, to assert herself in ways that are challenging and I see it, that awful reality light shining at the end of my honeyed moon tunnel. I had a flash of insight the other day, I suddenly thought 'oh my, I will be doing this whole parenting thing for a long time and this work will not get easier' and I saw how it can wear you down. Tiny little teardrops can still eventually wear down rock and that's it isn't it? Life just chips away pieces of you. Tragedies and grief and work and hopes and life in general erode you over the years, inevitably changing the shape of who you are. Not all in a bad way, of course - having Nahanni has been a singular joy to me, but still, I am having a great difficulty in coming to terms with the changes that I don't think I really saw happening. Suddenly I just looked down and realized there were little sinkholes here and there and I don't yet have the tools or materials to patch them up. The old clothes still fit, but they fit differently. The face is the same, but without the peachiness of youth. The life is the same, but not as carefree. And somewhere inside is this same vibrant, searching, intense woman...but the packaging is changing. And I'm not sure how to begin the remarketing, the reinvention. In a world that is so sexualized, so inherently focused on youth and on beauty, how do you deal with no longer being in the club?
Oh my god, I'm really doing it. I'm sitting in a coffee shop and crying. I've really lost it, I'm really falling apart. In some ways it's kinda funny, I keep feeling like I'm going to write the show of this and that makes me laugh thinking that I probably couldn't get cast because I'd be too old. Hah! That's a good one. Funny thing about youth, you never really see the end coming. It's like the car you didn't see and then BAM! it hits you that are not young anymore and you can't do a damned thing about it. Well, I guess you can whine about it on your blog, but really, what does that do?
Well, it makes you feel a little better for a minute or two.
It's not that I am irretrievably lost. I know that the same fire that has always driven me still exists and will propel me forward. Besides, what alternative is there? You can't pack up and go backwards [unless you are living in that sitcom] so you have to dig deep and find the way to move forward again, to embrace the new beauty, the new path, the new fight. The Chinese have the perfect understanding of this - the symbol for opportunity is hidden within the symbol for crisis. Out of chaos brilliant things are borne. This is my chaos right now. I will feed and water this seed as best I can so that a new small being can take root. This is the time when I must nurture myself, heal a little, dust off, move onwards and upwards. I cling to axioms like liferafts. I will not drown, but I think I'll be taking on water for a little while still.
