They don’t know that it is difficult to just start publishing poetry!
I want to sort things out for myself. I’m grateful to be alive. I want to be with my little Iris (turning three this Christmas). But I also want more equality with my husband again. I want to feel needed, to feel busy, to feel part of society the way I used to.
It feels good to write this down!
Thank you, Pepper.
Yours,
Birgitta
Dear Birgitta,
Thank you for writing this down! I don’t exactly have a solution for you, other than to validate that everything you say sounds completely sane to me. Sane, and therefore unanswerable. Some people love free time and look forward to retirement—you are not one of those people. You were lucky in that you loved your work and would have liked to hold on to it even as you embraced a slower pace of life.
I am not of retirement age, but I can relate to reaching a life stage where one is expected—or pushed—to work less. When my son was born, and then my daughter, the amount of child care and support available to me meant that I simply couldn’t work as much as I used to. I also felt pressure—from the world at large, from inside my family, and from inside my heart—to prioritize parenthood over work. There would have been no problem if work had been truly flexible, shrinking with the promise of being able to grow again when needed. And maybe some forms of work do wait, but my work is like rainwater—catch it in a bucket or it’s gone—or like a boulder rolling down a hill which is hard to set back in motion once it slows and stops.
Writing this just now felt both cathartic and shameful. There’s a shame in admitting vulnerability when you don’t have a way to fix it, or at least make it poetic. Of course, life is the answer. I’m beyond lucky to have a full life and two marvellous puppies. You’re lucky to be in a position to be able to retire and enjoy a full spectrum of family, friends, and hobbies. But still. There’s no easy way to banish the emptiness of not feeling useful, productive, directed.
O.K., enough wallowing.
I will say that, although I haven’t found a way to budge this type of open-ended discontentment, what I have found helpful is living with it. Not fighting it, not ignoring it, but acknowledging it and waiting patiently for opportunities. Find a patch of sunlight on the floor. Bask in it. You don’t need to be totally content to do so.
Meanwhile, while it’s not everything, do enjoy what you have. And I know you do.
In solidarity,
Pepper
