I never imagined that I would be 43 and single.
After all, I had my life all mapped out. I was voted Most Likely to Succeed and Best Hair in my small Minnesota High School; I was going places. I was going to graduate from college with honors, naturally, and get a high-powered, high-paying job, buy a house, meet an exceptional guy by the time I was 25 and get married soon after and have a couple of kids before I turned 30 and started to get old.
Things started out according to plan. I did have good hair. I did graduate from college with honors. did have a decent career run going. I bought my first house at age 24. I did meet an exceptional guy and married him at age 26. I had my son when I was 28, twin girls at 30. But just as I was pulling out of newborn twin haze and getting ready to ease into the-rest-of-my-fabulous-life, the wheels came off (my husband was a cyclist). My marriage imploded, my life fell apart and I was suddenly a single mom at age 32 who hadn't worked since I got married. I had turned into the woman I made fun of when I was young, single, unencumbered and knew everything.
And while that was not very funny to me at the time, I can see a lot of humor in it now. I have grown up in a million ways and can't imagine my evolution happening on any other path. It's amazing what some time (OK, fine, a decade) and a little perspective (and therapy) can do.
I joke with my friends that it's not freaking funny to be dating, perhaps seen naked for the first time, precisely when the body is starting to shift and melt. When you shift and melt with your longtime love, they knew you back in the day, so they see you through a filter of loving timelessness. Or maybe their eyesight is fading too? They know that your soft tummy and breasts were caused by the stretch of growing their beautiful babies, or the lines by your eyes are the product of shared laughs, vacation sun or squinting together into the future. To be middle-aged and single can be rather awkward, especially if you can't laugh about it. We want to date men our own age, but they often go for a second round start up, only to wind up in the exact same place a few years later. If we go younger we're cougars, and if we go older we're trophies. Everyone judges everyone as hastily as the swipe of a Tinder finger. Book, Cover. I think I already read you. Sometimes married women don't think about this when they feel restless and unappreciated, curious about the other side.
I call this the Greener Grass phenomenon.
It's basically the same thing women have done throughout history. Curly-haired girls want straight hair, while straight-locked girls use curlers. Tall girls slouch and short girls wear heels; brunettes bleach their hair and blondes go Goth; flat girls get implants and big ta-tas get reductions; young girls dress too old and middle-aged mamas dress too young; fair-skinned maidens bake in the sun and leather ladies get dermabrasion; smart girls play dumb and dumb girls act smart. We wait and wonder about puberty and later wax everything off and get our tubes tied.
We are in a constant, futile cycle of thinking the grass is always greener.
damb
