Older and still trying

I've recently expanded my personal blogosphere, and begun reading several new bloggers. I've noticed that many of my new daily reads are women younger than myself. NOT MUCH younger... maybe like 15 years or something. Whatever. Anyway, call it the weather, the season, the light shining just so through my non-existent office window-- in the span of one week I stumbled upon a handful of posts by these intelligent, witty, thought-provoking (if somewhat younger) women describing what could only be defined as ANGST.

(Okay and please take a moment to marvel upon the sheer LENGTH of that mighty sentence that I just wrote there. Okay and now reread what I wrote one more time because I'm feeling a little bit controlling and also like the appreciation of my work. Thanks.)

The dynamics: These women are mid-to-late 20s, most of them. Newly-wed-ish. Most with a young child or two. Some are college grads; some have already bathed in the well-spring of a young career. And each describes herself as having an unfettered need of some sort; a desire for...something. And with that desire, an attending, lingering sense of unfulfillment.

Their marriages are fine, but... I mean, they love their husbands and their lives and they are content, you know, LARGELY content, but... and their child or children are wonderful and sweet if slightly exhausting because of their ages and...it's just...something. Something isn't quite right, even if nothing is exactly wrong.

And to you wonderful, intelligent, thought-provoking, CREATIVE women, I say: I get it. OHMGAWD I so totally get it. Not to be completely patronizing, but (*well-meaning nod*) oh, sweetie, I have so been there, done that.

And I want to thank each of you. Because it wasn't until reading your posts that I was able to fully understand and remember that feeling. And I am so sorry you're feeling it, because I hated it.

I don't know, honestly, what it is, or where it comes from; I don't fully understand any of these women's lives to the fly-on-the-wall degree that is necessary to really understand each individual situation, but I can say, I remember being there very well.

This guy in the pretty robes says: "From the very core of our being, we simply desire contentment." I KNOW, RITE?

By age 23 I was married and a mother; in the span of one year, I'd gone from hyper-self-focused college grad, ready to take on the world, to wife and mother. Even my name wasn't my own anymore, and that had been the last vestiges of my personal identity. I'd gone from intense studying days and crazy college partying nights to on-my-own in the big world to wife and mother in what felt like the blink of an eye.

My dreams had been derailed by pregnancy; it wasn't until I was cooing into the face of my sweet, cherubic son that I started to understand it fully. That isn't true; it wasn't until I showed up for a job interview with my newborn son, brimming with a ridiculously blind confidence, that I really understood that no, I wasn't the center of my universe anymore.

But it wasn't even then that the malaise hit me. It was about a year later when, as a stay-at-home-mom, I looked at my intelligence and creativity and book smarts and complete lack of life experience and HUGE inborn desire and realized I felt completely and totally alone. I wanted to be a writer, but I had nothing to write about except being a mom to a toddler. Women with college educations were SUPPOSED to work. Women with babies were supposed to be at home. And what I wanted didn't matter anymore because, well... I was a mom.

Even worse, there was no internet.

What would I say to these talented women, as a voice of experience? I was once in your shoes, so how did I make this feeling go away? How did I solve the "problem"?

All of my answers suck. I mean, ALL OF THEM.

I got a divorce. (My situation was not your situation, just know that.) I got a job and put my kid(s) in daycare. I hated it. I cried all the time. Staying at home, I was bored to tears and wanted to use my brain; working, I was filled with guilt and wanted to be with my kids. Change of job, change of place, change of circumstances-- eventually I realized that the change that needed to happen was me. IN me.

I guess there was a series of things I did to make it quiet down. The first was to start living my life by my standards, not the way that I thought everyone else wanted me to live. Trying to make my spouse happy, even if it made me miserable. Trying to make my parents happy, even though I was now an adult and a mommy and a head of household and this was, well, my life. Mostly, trying not to disappoint anybody, EVAR.

In other words, I was being super LAME. FYI: You can't make everybody happy. And if you are not listening to yourself, and living honestly with yourself? That dissatisfaction will be pervasive and ever present.

Oh and all those things I tried? None of them worked. UNTIL I started listening to myself, really listening and paying attention, everything else was just shouting at the wind.

The best piece of advice I have to I offer this: Learn to release your attachment.

All those things we cling to-- the desire to write, the desire to be read, the desire to have lots of money, lots of friends, to have happy kids, to have a perfect marriage, to get that awesome make-up or those boots or that really great car or be out of debt or...

...it's all just desire. Wants. We're predicating our happiness on things, situations, attaching ourselves to the idea that if we just had this one thing or if that one situation just worked out like I've planned it...

And this is why desire sucks ass. Because desire is conditional, if you think about it. Desire means we can only be happy depending on a certain set of conditions. And because those conditions-- all conditions-- are ever moving and dependent on things out of our control, we're always going to be desiring one thing or another to make our lives perfect. We just end up having attachments to ideas, to desires, instead of...well, living what's at hand.

I once heard a Buddhist monk counsel to notice one's feelings. If you are angry, instead of reacting, simply notice how you are feeling, and ask yourself why you are feeling the way you do. Don't judge. Just notice it. Same goes when you're feeling sad. But really listen to the answer.

Example: I'm sad because he called me a name. Why does name calling make me sad? Because I am not what he called me. Okay. Why am I bothered still? After a moment of thinking, I feel my sadness slipping away, because I realize it doesn't matter what he called me, it isn't fact. And somehow, releasing my attachment to it makes me feel a lot better.

So, 20-somethings, that's my advice. Learn to release your attachment. And maybe you'll get rid of that gnawing empty feeling well before I did, well before you turn 40.