gracie’s muse · no. 005 · not a midlife cliché
A date in in Williamsburg, Brooklyn at The Diner.
I was never able to date more than one person at a time.
If you know me, you know…I fall in love and that’s it.
My love life seemed to be the only aspect of my life where I could focus on one thing.
(insert eye-roll here)
And while I’ve lived magical stories that will make for a page-turning book…the time has come to do something different.
But the questions are…what to do when the only way I know is the way I’ve been doing it? and what do I really want?
I’m 46.
Not married.
No children.
Starting over.
Again.
And I can’t claim the midlife cliché of “it’s not how I thought my life would turn out.”
I never had a checklist guiding my life.
I lived it as it twisted and turned, following my heart rooted in a deep connection to something greater than me.
Staying open to all the possibilities a checklist would limit.
I was too busy living each moment as it required.
I didn’t think about “time” and what time would be asking of me next.
And then 45 sat me down so time could scream in my face until all I heard was silence.
All I felt was blank. And all I knew was up for review.
In a renaissance of soul.
While I reengineer my compass, I’ve decided I need to keep connections with men light…fun…sexy.
I want to dance and laugh and make out like teenagers on a park bench with the NYC skyline as the backdrop.
I don’t want to know about the life you lived with your ex or the future you’re already projecting me into. I don’t want to talk about the laundry list of decisions we left at home to have a date with a stranger we hope to like.
I want a place to escape all that.
Not out of avoidance or disinterest, but in trusting that by 40- or 50-something years old, we’re not looking to parent or counsel each other and call it love.
At this point I’m realizing the first thing I want to know is…can you still have fun without it being complicated?
Can you plan a date that doesn’t start with dinner and end with an expectation?
Do you know how to leave me smiling at how you managed to make me feel like a Queen and a Princess at the same time?
And then can you let each present moment we share open a new door of wonder…a new thing to discover…a new reality to consider?
We enter a competition we haven’t even trained for and then rush to the finish line without running the race.
I’m still warming up. Stretching. Studying the track, breaking in my new shoes.
Meet me there, or don’t.
But I’m not trying to win a prize that’s going to sit on a shelf collecting dust for the next 30 years.
I’m just trying to share in some joy that doesn’t come with mental gymnastics the next day.
So can we keep it simple and just see how it goes…as it goes?
snippets from a book with no title
