Hold the Cranberry Sauce.

“Your hair looks nice.”

I looked at them across the table.  My hair doesn’t look nice.  I don’t remember the last time I washed it or even brushed it for that matter.  It feels like hay and sort-of smells like french fries since I was eating them last night when I fell asleep on the couch.  But that is what friends say when they don’t want to tell you the truth.  The truth being… “You look like shit.”

“I think I need an ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ experience.  You know, go somewhere and get fat, then go somewhere else and get anorexia, and then go somewhere else and have foreigners tell me I’m beautiful.”

The moment of awkward silence was getting stale.

“Well, I think your hair looks really nice.”

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I woke up this morning wondering if I was in purgatory.  I think I’m too young to be having a mid-life crisis and too old to be on a journey to “find myself.”  So what is the explanation of why I’ve reached this point in my life when I have no idea who I am and what I want?  I’m in purgatory.

There was a certain combination of confidence and stupidity that I had in my twenties that made me feel like I had the world by a string and could conquer anything I set my heart to accomplish.  In our twenties, we are able to learn new things, make stupid mistakes, be idealistic about our future; after all, we are babies…in our twenties.  But something happens as time progresses.  Patience wears thin.  Our vision for our future gets blurry.  Time becomes “of the essence”.  All of a sudden we aren’t really sure what “success” even means to us anymore.  I think there was something pleasant about the twenty-something stupidity.  We didn’t “think” then. We just “did.”

When I finally woke up post-twenties and had swallowed a big dose of reality and graduated from the school of hard knocks, I decided that “thinking” is the enemy.  When I realized that I was stuck with “thinking” like a bad tattoo, I decided I would search out a very holistic approach to life.  It seemed simple.  Be spiritually centered.  Be well rounded.  Don’t focus all of your time and attention to one thing.  Live a fulfilled life.  Go to church.  Help others.  Be healthy.  Go to therapy…twice a week.

Yet, with all of the holistic-ballistic-mumbo-jumbo, I’m still torturing myself with this quest and understanding of what I want out of life.  What is really going to make me happy?

What happens if I’m never really happy?  What happens if I really do find happiness?  When can I just breathe?  When can I stop being scared?  Should I ever really stop being scared when being scared motivates me?  When is the “other shoe going to drop?”  What do I do when the “other shoe drops.”  Where did these shoes come from anyway?  What do I want out of career?  Can I have career and not really love it? Do I just want to dedicate everything to a career?  Can you have a career and a relationship?  Can both be solid?  What do I want in a relationship?  Do I want some sort of dependency?  Do I want to be independent?  What if a couple is too independent?  Do you fall out of love when you’re too independent?  Doesn’t every relationship need a portion of “need” and a portion of “want?” Is it ok for a woman in 2012 to want to feel needed?  Wanted? And what about kids?  I’m too old for kids.  I’m certain my eggs are shriveling up as I’m thinking about this.  They are probably already old and moldy.  Who wants to be the oldest mom in preschool?  But what if I don’t have children?  Have I let down the female gender?  What happens when I’m 80 years old?  Who will have Thanksgiving dinner with me?  Will I be stuck in some old folks home unloved and alone?  Will I be eating fake turkey off a cafeteria tray?  What will happen when I’m 80?

Whew.

I explained this to one of my guy friends over breakfast this past weekend. “Is this seriously what women think about?” he asked.

“That’s just what I thought about this morning,” I replied.  “What did you think about this morning?”

“Eggs,” he smirked.

I’m almost wondering if I need to write a manual.  Not a manual on how to survive life, but a manual to anyone that needs to interact with me right now. I could wear it like a scarlet letter.  It could be entitled, “Warning: Contents Under Pressure.”  It is like taking a trip to Egypt to find the meaning of life, only to arrive at the spot and realize the entire message is in hieroglyphics and you don’t have internet connection to Google it on Wikipedia.  Crap.  Trash.

It is such a disappointment to know it took so long to get here.  Now I’m here.  Now what?

“You can’t go to anymore therapy, H, or you’ll have to quit your job.”  Well said…

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Maybe I’ll start by washing my hair.

Love, Heidi

xoxo