Learning To Breathe

I always knew I would get old.  I just didn’t know the day it would happen.  Getting old is sneaky like that.  It just creeps up on you when you least expect it and sort of settles in.

October 25, 2010.  I’d been to funerals before, but before they were always “them.”  Older people.  Other people.  Not us.  Not the people I laughed and cried and played with.  Not us.  It was the day I realized my body had aged, even if the rest of me hadn’t.

When my mother died I couldn’t breathe for five years.  I think I was afraid every breath took me farther away.  I kept dreaming that I’d find her, that she was only lost, but I finally learned to breathe again.

I wonder if I’ll learn how not to be old again?

I’ve found a new little friend. I call him Bestest and he’s almost like an imaginary friend.  He just drags me along with him and I lift him up so he can see who he is. It’s amazing how much younger I feel when that happens.

Metamorphosis, sometimes it’s less about dropping tails and more about writing tales.  It’s about allowing the real me to change into something more whole.  It’s about breathing and living in the mystery and going with the flow.