I have barely scratched the surface of anything at all; I spent most of my 20s and 30s trying to get my brain and body and life into a place where my choices weren't going to ruin me. I got my degree and worked at some good jobs; I no longer have an eating disorder and I got right with my relationship to alcohol and my desire to have a child; on the days I feel like obliterating myself, I no longer reach for the nearest thoughtless man. I've made progress! But I also miss some things from that era, like loud music at one in the morning as I'm kissing someone that might become someone; parties and pool-hopping and all-night art escapades; dumb outfits and good hair; feeling like anything might be possible, good and bad, like love was right around the corner and if this thing didn't work out, something else would. Remember those days? Before we felt locked into this track, a monorail life? Before I was tired all the time?
In the spirit of absolutely panicking about my encroaching mortality, here's a list of things I'd like to do by the time I turn 40 next year:
- Travel. I really want to go to New Zealand because it looks beautiful and like Small Canada, but I doubt that I'll get there by next year. I could probably pull off a trip somewhere a bit less antipodal, like Europe?
- Decide what I'm going to do about my boobs. These things, man. I've had huge breasts since I was thirteen, and I'm pretty over them. They give me headaches and they never fit into bras; they look crazy in photographs and are just Too Damn Much. But at the same time, they're mine, I've never not had them, and I don't know how I feel about a breast reduction. So I should spend some time with the idea.
- Sew fearlessly. I am always very scared about sewing, because I'm a perfectionist and I hate doing things when I'm bad at them; at the same time, I like the idea of sewing, so I should sew more. Practicing the thing! Doing the thing!
- Make more art. You know: stuff I can put on my walls that tells me about myself.
- Commit to my body. I am the fattest I've ever been and sometimes that bothers me—like when I see a picture of myself and I'm like, "who is that?" At the same time, I love not hating myself for what I'm eating or what size I am. This would be more an act of care for my primal home, which needs tenderness and some ass-kicking now and then. I love feeling strong and feeling sexy. I love looking good, even when I'm heavy. I am vain! I am hot!
- Commit to my friends. I am extraordinarily blessed that I have smart, amazing, creative, generous, kind, loving friends who have chosen me; I'm cursed with dumb jealousy and a tendency to dwell on the friendships that have soured, which really spoils the whole damn cake. This is a reminder to both pursue the people who feel good, and to revel in the relationships that work well now.
- Audit and edit. I have many, many things: magazines from 2002, skeins of yarn with no planned project, clothes that may never fit again, habits that make me crazy, relationships that feel stilted or distant. Taking a hard look at all my things and deciding which should be mended and salvaged, and which can be thrown away, is a great turning-40 project.
- Love my kid. Oh my god, I love my kid so much. I love his tender heart and his mean streak, his goofball jokes and serious play; his awful, beautiful, transcendent humanity. I love watching him with his friends and his grandparents. I love bedtime after we turn off the lights and he asks me to tell him a secret, after which he'll tell me a secret—a six-year-old confession of misbehaviour or a bad feeling, and I'll take the weight off his heart and carry it in mine. He's perfect, he's flawed, he's my absolute favourite person.
- Publish some fiction. I just started a writer's group and maybe this will be the kick in the ass/support I need to actually submit some stuff? To places? That publish?? Also, just accept the fact that I will never be a Serious Literary Person and write what makes me happy, which is science fiction and fantasy, and I'll never be in the New Yorker and that is fine.
- Write some non-fiction. I've been giving these really detailed and—I think—promising shower talks to myself about ritual and community, but when I sit down to actually write about these topics, I feel like a) an imposter and b) the weight of all the things I want to say are yoked around my neck and I need to get it right. What I actually need to do is just get it out, draft one, and then go from there.
- Make a quilt. Specifically, a quilt made from Noah's baby and toddler clothes. No, you're feeling tender.
- Decide on a home. I once read that "home is not where you're from; home is where all your attempts to escape cease," and so I don't know that I'm quite home yet. If Toronto called and invited us back, would we go? Will we buy a house? Will I throw my life into the sea in order to live in a yurt in the Scottish hillscape? Stay tuned!
- Therapy? We are currently seeing a couples counselor; I have also seen my fair share of therapists and done everything from CBT and group therapy to EMDR. What I'd like is a therapist who focuses less on all my weird-bad thoughts and more on my weird-bad body feelings when I have those thoughts. Does this exist? I'm so tired of talking.
- Sex stuff. I know my mom reads this so I'll just say: there are some things I'd like to do in my lifetime. They're on the list so I can check them off when I do 'em.
- Hair and makeup. This is so vain, but I just want to look predictably good at some point in my life. This is a two-parter: I want to figure out my wild-n-curly hair, which is sometimes an angelic cloud of curls, but more often a donut bun I wear on my crown because I don't like it touching me. I also want to figure out what I need to do so that I feel super pretty but with minimal daily touching-up. Is this brow tinting? Lash extensions? Fake freckles? A chemical peel? Better sunscreen? Who knows? Not me! I could try harder.
- Dance like a goddamn maniac. I love dancing. I love losing myself in a dark room, three drinks in, sweating, music too loud, going outside to cool down, going back in to ramp up. I love it. None of us have had in the last two years—most of us—and I didn't have it for a few years before that, due to solo parenting and baby-rearing and all the sundry parts of new-family life. But god, I just want to dance.
- Eco-grieve. I feel many kinds of ways about being a person on planet Earth these days: worry, guilt, anger, rage, fear. I fret about how to keep Noah in a place that might become fundamentally scarier by the end of this century; I worry about how I'll manage when I get too hot or too cold or food comes off the shelf or whatever other disaster hurtles towards us. I need to feel this thunderous grief for our mother-Earth; ignoring it makes it worse.
- Be with people. I don't even know what this looks like, but I do know that after two years of isolation and more years of feeling on the outside, I want to just be with people. Hanging out on the porch, digging in the garden, pushing kids on the swing, dancing on a hill, making art in a garage, volunteering, walking in the forest, trading eyerolls, all of it.
- Cure the clicky ankle. And not just the clicky ankle: the sore hip, the itchy boob, the jaw that doesn't open all the way on one side, the uterus with a fibroid the size of a whole other uterus, the intrusive thoughts, the sinus pain. Because of my family's tendency to be diagnosed with bad things when we go to the doctor, I often go absolutely insane in advance of very routine medical appointments, and I will sometimes just avoid the doctors altogether if I think I can get away with it. Tending to my body as I get older as a way of loving that I am getting older. Ugh! Forties! Yay!
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