Getting Older

If you're not getting older, your dead.
Tom Petty


I turn 57 today.  When I say "57" out loud it leaves a strange taste in my mouth.  57 seems so old but I am not old lol. 

My body may have weathered 57 winters and 57 summers, changing and morphing accordingly but I haven't .  My body may be getting closer to the grave but I am not. 

My mind has also weathered seasons and situations, changing and evolving but I haven't.  Who I am, I now feel more so than know,  is eternal and changeless as it peers out through these two sockets on my head and uses this tool of a mind to get about.  I am as I always was.  Hmmm!

As I realize that truth, I don't look on this particular birthday as anything to celebrate or to mourn. It is a date, a marker of my surviving another 365 amazing, miraculous days on this planet, in this form, using this mind. There is nothing personal or special about it! There is a lot to appreciate every day, every moment by everyone.

That being said, I found myself over the course of the last week feeling sad and "stressed".  There is a restlessness in me today that is preventing me, at the moment, from sitting with my feelings.  Of course, I need to sit with the restlessness and make peace with that first  but isn't that an oxymoron in itself?  I will figure it out lol.

Without having to look too deeply, I have an idea what it is stemming from .  Physically...sleep dep is slowly starting to wrap its tentacles around my day.  I am not complaining or resisting that.  It is what it is. I can honestly say...so far...my transitional symptoms are not as life altering as I was told they would be. But yes...I wake up several times a night in a sweat and I seem to be dreaming more than usual. Quality of sleep is definitely altered.

My dreams are talking loudly to me though and showing me what the issues are.   I am dreaming about repressed trauma, things I barely remembered or never really dealt with. This physical change and the spiritual/psychological one I am presently going through  is leading to an unpeeling of many protective layers of wrapping around this changeless, eternal Self.  Memories and repressed pain is being exposed and that is not a bad thing. There is an opening there for this trauma to be recognized, and expressed so that I can peel back the layer it exists on, to expose more and more of who I really am.  I am getting there.

I am restless right now because ego mind is telling me to do what it always tells me to do when I feel the un-ease or dis-ease of resurfacing emotions: "Run!"  (run or numb, or avoid, escape, hide, stuff, push away) and I am not going to do that.  :) I will sit and deal with whatever comes up as it comes up...
and it starts with recognizing, allowing and embracing that restlessness in a self loving and nurturing way.

It is all so very good.