A wrinkle in time

 Remember what it was like to not think about time the way you do as an adult?
Like do you remember counting down the hours before school got out or until the days to minutes of some upcoming event as a youth and how time seemed to take forever?
 By 44 time is not the same.

 Time hit me watching my oldest open his birthday card when he turned 18 just a week after he graduated high school. tears rolling down my face, I am often one to blame a fake sneeze on my tears and ask to excuse myself for a silent cry.

 Suddenly I was reminded of time in such a way it controlled my thoughts daily especially at 4a.m.
I was always wondering how it had all gotten away so fast.
It seemed I had just left their father and started life on my own with children. We had just celebrated my oldest 18th when in fact he will be 23 next year. Time wasn't being counted on the backs on my kids' birthdays any longer, it was me against it for a race to the finish.

 I hadn't thought of careers or the future certainly not retirement and thinking ahead until now, this present moment that continues to make me wonder why hadn't I concerned myself with retiring? Are we actually living in an age that people like me just have no retirement plans at all due to giving so much time to caring for others?

 I have officially broken my life into how many cats I may be able to own before my untimely demise because I am usually up at 4a.m thinking about random shit related to time.
 Should I save up and pay cash for a house or say fuck it and rent for the next 11 years until I can go hang out in a 55+ community? These are real thoughts p.
 How many years will I get if my oldest decides to have kids within the next 5 years? I was already married by his age and my mother was only 5 years older than me when I had him...OH MY GOD time sucks and it ruins everything.


 There were upsides to this epiphany of course. I had been forced to realize the difficulty women or single parents have in raising a child with severe conditions including Autism, putting the time factor of his precious life before a career for 18 years and more because disability goes way beyond 18.
 My time had inadvertently been slipping by because I was fixated on his time being beautiful.

 I wonder if other people obsess about time as I do.
 I had so questions and no one left really to answer them. Any links to my hidden family were long gone in the lips of dead relatives.
 If I saw friends having babies now I would calculate the age of each milestone for them. Many of the people I knew would be almost 65 by the time their kids went to college. Fucking 65?!! No, I was not going to run out of time. I had to plan and save and find ways to see everything I wanted to.
 I would forget my fears of flying and go see Spain, I would dance to Bollywood music and feed the poor across the world. I was still going to see Peru.
  Time was an opponent to my life plan and another unwanted passenger in my perimenopausal journey and I didn't like it at all.

 The deaths of three relatives in a span of 7 years made me grasp the reality that all those fears I had as a child over death were not gone. I had just shifted all my fears into worry over the kids' futures. When it came to me facing my own self-evident facts...I had been pushing all that out of mind for almost a decade.

 The damage to my body from smoking, making bad health choices, having multiple skin cancers all began to surface.
  Finally, I was aware that time mattered and those days I would say I will worry about my heart later was coming to later being about five years ago.
 Perimenopause makes you stare time down the throat with memories both good and bad reminding you time was controlling your entire life since birth.

 It made me realize everything I thought about love was so wrong. Perhaps the ones I let slip through that have remained in the stands cheering me through the last decade of life ( the hardest one yet), they were worth seeing.
  Maybe love was not what I thought it was and time was allowing my heart to see love, not my mind telling me all the things I thought mattered or was told mattered.

 Minds are beautiful.
 They can change and rewire and evolve and live through trauma. The brain is resiliently capable of forgiveness. In fact, its the only organ responsible for every emotion, but I hadn't once seen the world with my brain.
 I had been living for the longest time attached to what I was taught as a child about life, parenting, selfishness and how it was perfectly alright to quit on yourself to raise kids but I didn't believe it and I actually began seeing all the flaws in the many fairytales I had heard over the years.

 From age 40 to 44 I changed so much in a spiritual and emotional way that it would allow me to have become almost unrecognizable.
 I believe strongly it was getting my hormones balanced that allowed that to happen. It concerned me that even as a younger adult woman I could have had hormonal balance issues and never known.
 There is peace within me that time is there but so am I and it isn't selfish to recognize myself now as the most important part of my story.
 We forget that through the years and will be reminded midlife so I am preparing you for the epiphanies to come and the challenges in understanding you from 20 years ago to today.
 This may be the happiest time of my life and in love. The possibilities are endless with my head back in control.
 Love and relationships are finally able to happen because I have finally taken time to let go of the people that took up so much time in my head.
 It is ok to let people go and know that you can love them but not allow them in.
 It reminds me of the poem I read recently.

 Reason, Season, or Lifetime People come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. When you figure out which one it is, you will know what to do for each person. When someone is in your life for a REASON, it is usually to meet a need you have expressed. They have come to assist you through a difficulty; to provide you with guidance and support; to aid you physically, emotionally or spiritually. They may seem like a godsend, and they are. They are there for the reason you need them to be. Then, without any wrongdoing on your part or at an inconvenient time, this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk away. Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand. What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled; their work is done. The prayer you sent up has been answered and now it is time to move on. Some people come into your life for a SEASON, because your turn has come to share, grow or learn. They bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh. They may teach you something you have never done. They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy. Believe it. It is real. But only for a season. LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons; things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person, and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life. It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant. — Unknown