I recently asked my husband,

Do you think it’s not that we have more stuff . . . just that we don’t have the energy to deal with it anymore?

Like we have same amount of ‘stuff’ to deal with, a combination of problems and worries and circumstances unique to this moment in time; no more than any other time, just a different set for this unique plot point.

Perhaps what has changed is our capacity to hold and energy to deal with said problems.

That is what has changed on the time line.

This phase is a phase just like any other. It is us who are the variable.

But even as one hemisphere of my brain asserts that logic, the other senses the shadow of a cascade of falling leaves. The movement though swift and light signaling great weight.

It is but a different set of circumstances.

But it is death and long goodbyes, it is separation and seclusion. It is feeling no more wise or certain in this age than that lived years ago. It is knowing that each tough cycle is not a circle, but a blip on an ongoing ticker tape.

It is living through COVID and crisis and perimenopause and physical ailments and transition and pivot and realizing that there is no going back to the way it was.

Unsettled is the new now.

And you get to do it with diminished energy and injury and added weight.

Is it that culture and continuity collapsed in concert with my midlife? Or that this is what midlife is?