Finding A Way To Be Both

It feels like ages since I've posted here, but I had the urge to write, and so I decided to do so. If you follow me on social media at all, you've probably seen me post about the internal tug of war I've been feeling between the younger version of myself and the this older version of myself that hasn't quite felt, well, like myself. It's been particularly challenging because I'm at a stage of life that most people encounter at a younger age, that society slates for younger people. While many friends my age have teenagers and have been in their marriages and careers for 20 years, I've been in this version of my career for two years, my husband and I have been married for five and a half years, and I'm trying to become a first time parent at 43 years old (to be clear, 43 wasn't the goal age, we've been trying since I was 38, shortly after we got married). On top of that, because so many shifts in my life have happened during covid times, which has already been a bit surreal-feeling to begin with, I've just felt like I'm in a weird place. The world and life was already in a situation many of us had never experienced before, and in the middle of that I started a new career, bought a house and moved back to the NJ suburbs, and started fertility treatment. This new version of me hasn't felt so much like a transition, but almost like someone closed the imaginary curtain in front of younger me and pulled up the curtain on "approaching mid-40s, suburban homeowner, corporate employee, infertility me and said "ok this is who you are now." Which I realize sounds ridiculous, since - with the exception of getting laid off and having to look for a new job which turned into a new career path - these were all things I actively moved towards (not that I moved towards infertility actively, but I did move towards having a child actively). Nor was any of this a sudden change. I began transitioning out of running my business full time years ago, when I slowly started adding up hours in my then part-time job. We knew that we were going to want to move into a single family home with a yard and more space when we started trying for a family, and we also planned to move back to NJ because my parents and my mother-in-law live here. And we've known since before we got married that we were going to start trying to conceive shortly after. None of these changes were a total shock. And yet I think it's the gradualness that's getting me. It feels like I should have slowly gotten used to this new version of me along the way, but I somehow I'm still surprised that I find myself here. 

I think one of the aspects that I've been struggling with the most is the idea of having to choose to be one of these two versions of myself. I can either be the young, fun, energetic, entrepreneur version of myself, or I can be the corporate employee, middle aged, infertility-battling, suburban home owner that's exhausted before 9PM version of myself, and never the two shall meet. But the thing is, I don't really want to fall into either of these two stereotypical categories. I don't want to be some young, single, partying version of me (or even some young married partying version of me). I appreciate the experience and wisdom that's come with having lived 43 years on this planet.  I have a spouse/life partner that I love. My house has gorgeous 100 plus year old charm, and and we have a backyard for  Grace (dog) and a pool. Growing up, having an in-ground pool was my marker for someone had "made it", so this feels like next level adulthood to me. And despite this seeming mid-life identity crisis, I'm actually at the healthiest point mentally that I've been in my adult life. I wouldn't change that for all the youth and excitement in the world. I wouldn't want to change any of this, in fact. At the same time, the other day I looked at what I was wearing to the work for one of my "every other week office days", and I thought "I look like a conventional middle-aged corporate-working soccer mom." And other than the mom part, I've never aspired to be any of this. I've never wanted to look like I stepped out of a Talbots catalog, going to my cubicle job in corporate America, and have my big excitement of the week be that Costco carried some new brand of something I enjoy. As much as young, single, partying me isn't me anymore, neither is this fully me. 

So I've been working with the idea that I can be both. Not both as in "I go out partying and then show up at the my corporate job in my talbots-like outfit the next day. But that I don't have to choose to be "old" or "young" (in quotes because what's old or young has drastically changed as I've aged), to be conventional  or out of the box. To be fun or responsible. I can pull in the aspects of each stage of my life that still feel like me now, and I can leave the rest. I can be in this place of transition without having to teleport from one to the other suddenly and never look back. I love my job, actually. I'll probably always miss being an entrepreneur, but I love my job and I work for a great company. I've always liked transportation and logistics, and I can see myself growing through a career here. I have the advantage of a hybrid work schedule which at the moment is really primarily work from home with an office day every other week or so, and that gives me a lot more flexibility and freedom than I ever thought I'd have in a traditional job. I can do this and still teach yoga and still have some travel clients that I work with nights and weekends. And to be honest, especially with the expenses of fertility treatment, knowing I'm being paid a certain amount every two weeks regardless of whether it's been super busy or super slow is game changing. I can also generally log off when I'm done and not have to worry much about it until I log in again, which is drastically different from entrepreneurship (in which I was nearly always "logged on" even if just in my head), and I do appreciate the benefit of this. 

This ability to be both extends into other areas as well. My style has changed, but I can still honor the uniqueness, the quirkiness, the me-ness in my style choices - I can evolve my look without having to suddenly look in the mirror and not recognize myself. I don't have to dress a certain way (other than situationally appropriate) just because I am in my 40s and own a home in the suburbs. I can be these things and also have a funky style that feels like me, but maybe not exactly like 20s, self-employed, spending my weekends at bars until midnight version of me. I can be responsible and run errands and do yard work and clean the house, and also have fun. Maybe fun has morphed over time. Maybe now it's not (even without it being covid times) happy hour three times a week or big festivals on the weekend or eight hour long concert tailgates. Maybe it's trying new activities - I'd like to try both rock climbing (at a gym) and disc golf. I'd like to get back on my bike and to do more hiking and kayaking and try stand up paddle boarding again. Fun can be hosting friends and family for cookouts and pool time in the back yard.  In a week, my husband and I are taking our first destination vacation in over three years (we did a staycation last summer) and we're heading up to a rental home in Maine. We plan to hike and do outdoorsy things, explore the area, and just enjoy the freedom that comes from being on vacation. I've always enjoyed these types of activities, but they are now at the top of the list when I think of doing something fun or enjoyable, instead of mixed in with all of the other activities I enjoyed when I was in my 20s and even early-to-mid 30s. 

This both-ness is still a work in progress. Some days I am so grateful for my "older" stage of life, and other days I miss the energy and passion and excitement I had 10 or 15 years ago. But I think that's all part of it. Just like I wouldn't expect to one day wake up with a full head of gray hair when the day before it was all brown, I don't expect that there's this magic moment that I'll seamlessly slip from "young" to "old" and think "yes, this is exactly who I am now".  To me, the both-ness is finding this point of equilibrium that I can come back to. Finding this new version of me that lies somewhere in the in-between, that's somewhere in process, in transition. This version of me is somewhere in the middle, which is, when you think about it, exactly what middle age is (and before you say I'm not middle aged, I'm 43, which means that double my age is over the average life expectancy, so I am, quite literally, middle aged). As a society, we tend to think of middle age as that time when men get a new red sports car and women get bad dye jobs, both trying to recapture their youth when actually it makes them just look older than they are. And maybe for some people that is the case. But middle age is actually be this really unique space, where we get to actively participate in our aging, our rediscovery of ourselves, our growth. We have the opportunity to take what we still want to gather from our younger years, and transform it into a version that makes sense for today. I see this in the way that my passion has evolved. I may not be as "fiery" as I used to, but I'm also not so "all over the place".  Maybe now it's just a softer version, a quieter strength. In my younger years my passion was displayed on my sleeve for all the world to see. Now, I carry it more within me, as a guiding force, and I may have to dig a little deeper to find it or recognize it (the space I am, admittedly, currently in), but I know that it's still there, even if I struggle to access it sometimes. In this middle age stage of life, I have the benefit of wisdom and experience gained from having lived over four decades, and the curiosity to continue to want to explore life. I know my habits and patterns, even if I am not always the best at disrupting the less helpful ones.  I know, at the core, who I am and who I'm not, even when how that's portrayed in daily life feels a bit tricky to grasp at times. I may not know exactly where I'm going or how I'm going to get there, but I think that recognizing this is part of being at this stage. I know that no matter how many concrete plans I make, there's no guarantee that they're all going to happen as imagined (in fact, many of them probably won't). This is the stage of life in where I'm able to take everything that's been me and my life so far, and use it to rediscover myself now, and to guide myself going forward. And when I think about it, far from being the dreaded "midlife" stage that society likes to write off as "over the hill/one foot into retirement and old age", middle age is actually a pretty remarkable place to be.