It is 2025. I am 40 years old. I have lived in Austin for fifteen years now. My husband died almost ten years ago. I met my wife three years ago, and I have been out as a lesbian for less time than that.
I’ve never been happier. I have also never been less sure about how to navigate the world.
The other day, I stumbled across a funny meme scrolling TikTok. I’m not proud, but I love TikTok. Though being decades older than the app’s target demographic and extremely uneasy by the level of pro-Trump propaganda it facilitates, I still unwind or destress under the guise of the TikTok algorithm. Go ahead and add “Social media” to the list of things I don’t know how to navigate these days.
Anyways, the meme I saw was a cute, silly little cartoon of some kind of farm animal with a voice-over explaining, “I was told the crisis would be midlife and result in a fancy car, but so far the crisis has been constant and has only resulted in unhealthy coping mechanisms.” Staring at an almost-gone empty jar of M&M’s, I can relate to that sentiment.
I have survived a lot in the last ten years. So much trauma, loss, and change. I have patted the wet, lumpy clay that is my identity into numerous shapes. It’s been thrown on the wheel more than once, only to come out wobbly and unstable. I start a new, centered cone and try again. With each spin, I feel steadier in my own presence. The crisis does not feel midlife or omnipresent. I made it through some really hard shit, and I am okay.
But what do I do now?
When you live through trauma and the destabilizing reality that is PTSD, getting through the days and the months and the years feels like the biggest task at hand. I still get triggered occasionally. There are moments where I feel those losses in the same intense, physical vacuum in my chest. I felt that way for years, but honestly, time and therapy—so much therapy—have done their work. Most days, the sad, scared widow feels far away from me. I look back at her with kindness and as much grace as I can muster. She was so young.
I won’t be as bold as to say that I’m halfway through life. My late husband kept saying that when he turned thirty, and we know how that ended. Regardless of what percentage of my life I’m through, I’m older and more healed and (assumingly) wiser after all this life experience. But I have no idea how to move forward most days. Nothing is simple anymore.
I don’t know how to navigate setting myself up for financial security and using money as a way to better my life and the lives of those around me without giving resources to people who then use it to harm me and those that I love. Or how to pay my bills without being complacent in this oligarchy and the soulless capitalist machine that seems to have turned its back on basic human rights.
I don’t know how to share my story in a way that is meaningful and impactful for others. I know that my years blogging in the equestrian community were impactful to that sport. I know that being open and raw about my grief, mental health struggles, and experience of addiction helped others. I can’t count the times kind emails, notes, or even a stranger saying hello proved the importance of sharing stories for human connection. But where is the line between narcissism and candidness? How do I tell an honest story while protecting myself and the people in my life? What does writing on the internet even mean these days?
I don’t know how to accept that people who say they love me support the rampage happening in this current presidential administration. I don’t want to believe that people I know and love prioritize a perceived sense of safety and normalcy for themselves as more important than having empathy for people unlike them. I don’t know how to maintain hope that things will be better in future generations when they are so unstable right now.
I am older and wiser and better and happier, but I am just as unsteady as I ever was.
Writing has always helped me find myself. It has been my best tool for understanding the world around me. So I am opening the door for myself again.
Blogging, content creation… whatever the hell we’re calling it these days, is something I’ve done since 2000. I was a teenager then, publishing my thoughts on the internet. It is a messy, complicated, and vulnerable process. When I first started on LiveJournal, I had no idea the joys and heartaches I would eventually face.
Now it is 2025. I am forty. Here I am writing on the internet, yet again. I have no idea the joys and heartaches I’m going to face.
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