We can not start over but we can create a new beginning.

For the last decade perhaps longer, I've felt overwhelmed and out of control. It's felt as if I was one of those balls tumbling around erratically in the lottery cage with very slim odds that I'd end up on top of the pile. I've written before about how I spend half my time yearning for the days when my life seemed perfect, when I felt in control and as if I was nearing the top of that mountain called success. Then my mom died and the life I thought I was so in control of the path I thought I'd mapped so perfectly began to crumble. I think my life probably still appeared to be running smoothly and I looked like I had it all together but I felt as if I was just treading water in a vast, endless ocean full of sharks and other dark and unknown threats. It took another decade before I stopped trying to climb up. I was tired, emotionally exhausted by my silent battle with an enemy no one else could see but me. Another decade and my tumble down that mountain finally ended with me crashing to the bottom, broken and struggling to piece myself back together.

The saddest part is, I don't think I'm alone in feeling this way. I think we all tend to think everyone else has their life pulled together especially in these days of social media providing us a picture perfect view of others lives but I doubt reality lives up to the edited view we're given. Everything is filtered now, photoshopped and perfectly lit with all the bad parts cropped out but everyone's life has flaws and there is probably no one who has a life that lives up to their expectations.

I think that's one reason I started this blog. Sure, reason number one was to help myself to improve myself and get my life back in order but I also wanted to let others know, they are not alone in this struggle we call life. My niece once asked me why I was always telling stories on myself where I came up short or did dumb things. Well, for one thing, you have to learn to laugh at yourself but also, I want people to know, it's okay to mess up because we all do it. True, some like me seem to do it more than others, lol, but I do provide a nice cautionary tale.

I apologize for being all over the place with this. I'm just trying to work it out in my own head. I've realized lately that I'm never going to regain either the body or the life that I had twenty or so years ago and I have to accept that before I can move forward. But I've also realized that, just because I'm past sixty, my life isn't over. Yes, for the past year as I attempted to gain a foothold on this new climb, I've either been spending my time looking back to what was or imagining how things could be if I'd just get my life together. Perhaps my stalemate with this challenge comes from knowing, in the back of my mind, that I will never achieve either of these "perfect" goals. My past is a lot like those perfect pictures of people's lives on Instagram and Facebook, the memories are heavily edited. Sure there were good times, new adventures and experiences and I was in good shape with a body whose skin didn't sag but there were struggles then, too. I just gave the appearance to others that everything was okay. In our memories and our expectations we live in airbrushed perfection. But perfection is unattainable because it is a myth, it doesn't exist.

So, where does that leave me? Learning to appreciate the here and now no matter how scruffy or dirty or flawed it is. If we can't love ourselves or our lives or homes or jobs in all of their broken beauty, how will we love them once we piece them back together? It's like my house, which is in dire need of repair and renovation (a tree fell through the roof for heaven's sake, I haven't had a real working kitchen for over ten years and the foundation problems have been repaired but the front porch still needs to be rebuilt and what about that ten year old leak under my kitchen sink that Steve keeps promising to get to?), we can fix all of the problems but the scars are still going to be there. I can lose weight, firm up those muscles and be stronger and healthier but it's still a sixty-three year old body and the wear and tear and abuse I've put it through, for all of those years, is going to still show.

That brings me back to where I started this novella, we can't start over but we can create a new beginning. And the first step is accepting where you're starting from. We can still appreciate the past and all of the joy and heartaches that brought us to this point but we have to stop grasping for it. We can still have our dreams but we can't reach them if we spend all of our time fantasizing about what might be, what could be. To begin again, we have to have a starting point and that is the now and with each step forward, we will still be in the now. This moment in time is all we have. It is not infinite. It will be gone in a moment so don't waste it trying to live in the past or the future. Live for now, do what is at hand and then take a step forward and repeat. Who knows how far we can go. We really have no control over life and all of the planning in the world can't guarantee success or progress. The only chance we have to change our future is to live in the now and make the most of what's right in front of you.