Hold tight, you’re slowly coming back to life.

Motherhood, marriage, mental health and mortgages. The soundtrack to my life - but half a decade in, the music changed and now I march to a different beat.

Photo by Stefano Zocca on Unsplash

The beginning of my fifties started in the same vein as the end of my forties. The impending loss of my daughter to university and her new life beyond, the continuing decline of my parents, the demands of mothering teenagers, maintaining a two decades old marriage, my aching body, long hard hours working for the NHS, low pay, high costs and a mortgage debt that refused to shrink. The future did not look bright. But the darkest hour is just before dawn.

I needed my fifties to be different, especially when I considered the maths. When I reached forty, I calculated that I was halfway through my life. Half done, half to go. Plenty of time left. However, at 50 my simplistic equation no longer balanced.

Even if I did hit my 80s, 30 years did not seem like a long time to achieve my dreams. Would I even be fit enough to enjoy the twilight years of my life? Would I even make it? Having lost a couple of friends during my 40s nothing seemed guaranteed anymore. I wanted to make the most of the life I had left. But there were hurdles to clear along the way.

My eldest daughter left home 3 weeks before my 50^th birthday. I had been preparing for that day since the day I birthed her and yet I still felt massively underprepared and completely overwhelmed. I was bereft. But unexpectedly it did not last. My pain gradually became offset by my pride.

After a short time, the wobbly lipped, teary, terrified little girl that I had reluctantly left at her dorm room door blossomed into a confident, self-assured, happy young woman. My grief eased. I still miss her terribly. But she comes home, and we take up from where we left off. We have not only survived but our relationship has thrived. I felt healed, elated and vindicated. Maybe I wasn’t such a bad mother after all?

The relief did not last long. I got the call I was dreading a few days before the Christmas that same year. My mum had suffered a near fatal stroke and was in intensive care. My husband had Covid. It was not safe for us to visit. Tortuous days of stomach churning anxiety followed. Mercifully mum recovered in part.

Coming so close to losing a parent made me value the precious time we have left even more. I realised that I didn’t want to waste any more irreplaceable time dreading their deaths. Instead, I vowed to spend my time celebrating their lives. Anytime our family meets now is time for a celebration – happy February 22^nd was our last event! I know I will have to face the death of my parents one day, but time is limited for all of us. I didn’t want to waste any more.

Two seemingly impossible hurdles cleared, the tide changing, slowly I felt myself coming back to life. I may not have known exactly what I wanted, but I knew some things I didn’t. The time had come to stop giving people chances who had repeatedly blown them. I went non (or at best very low) contact with some family members.

It was terrifying. It was exhilarating. There are days now, like birthdays and Christmas when I can feel myself breathe for the first time in years. I will never quite get over the relief and I can’t believe it took me so long. I was entering my ‘no fucks left to give’ era and nothing was going to stop me.

Not even my own husband. The departure of our eldest and the near departure of at least one of my parents left me facing the reality of the next (and final) decades of my life. We were about to become just ‘us’ again. And we had not been about just ‘us’ for nearly 20 years. How was that going to work? Shall we start date nights and take up couples’ paddle boarding? Fuck no.

At 50 you go for the root cause, no time left to paper over cracks. We started the kind of psychological work that we should have done years ago. Plasters were torn off some very old unhealed wounds. It’s an ongoing process. But I love him more now than I ever did. And we didn’t have to take up paddle boarding.

My own Bank of Fucks had been so sorely depleted during my forties, in fact my life and now I was going to start filling up a metaphorical savings pot. I started writing. Mostly about women’s issues and lately political satire. Yes, political satire, that surprised me too.

I declared the kitchen table my ‘workspace’ and told my family to make their own dinners. Something told them not to argue. I reduced my NHS working hours. Sure, my pension pot is more like a pension puddle, evaporating with each passing day but that’s the point. The days are passing, I can’t buy any more. I want to live them.

I updated my wardrobe – well I sold my daughter’s old clothes on Vinted and rebought items for myself. My girls were happy for me. I invested in proper grown-up face cream – not baby wipes and my daughter’s half empty bathroom rejects. I bought earrings. Cheap ones but enough to make me feel a bit more ‘me’ again. I joined a ‘Barre class. I’m useless at it but at least I am giving it a go.

I stopped being a martyr to housework. I stopped following my highly capable children and husband around the house, picking up their crap like a demented maid. I paid a man to change the broken blind in my bedroom that has been driving me mad for five fucking years. Five years with an unworkable blind, held up by my daughter’s hair clips. Enough already. I was on a role, and I have no intention of stopping.

I stopped fretting about my gargantuan mortgage. We saw a mortgage advisor. He advised, ‘fuck it’, sell the house when you are older, release the equity and buy a small flat. Works for me, less to clean and no stairs. Suddenly everything is win/win.

I could go on but if you are reading this in your thirties or forties you probably have a million mind numbing chores to be getting on with. If you are reading this in your fifties and above, you probably stopped halfway through thinking ‘I could have written that’. And if you are reading this below the age of 30, at least your hangovers don’t floor you for 3 days and your metabolism hasn’t gone into reverse yet.

Whatever age you are reading this, I hope your epiphany does not take as long as mine but sometimes its only when we realise how little time we have left, how much we have overcome, how damn hard we have worked and what really matters to us that we really start living. Life begins at 40? Not for me it didn’t. The best was yet to come…