Medical procedures that involve anesthesia often put me in a mental tailspin, and my recent visit to a local surgical center offered no exceptions. Even though it was a routine procedure that many of us of a certain age endure, I carefully placed our outdated medical directives and wills on my home desk before going to the surgery center. They are from when we lived in Maryland, and I’ve been thinking for the past 15 years that we should update them to Arizona. Which is, wow, how long we’ve lived in Flagstaff now. That was also around the same time that I almost died from a staph infection contracted during another routine medical procedure. But that was a long time ago in a city far, far away.
So, medical procedures and birthdays force me to confront my mortality, and I had both this past week. I’m now on the waning side of 50 and am always interested in what each new year will hold for me. I tend to celebrate birthdays better than New Year’s Day: reflect on the past year, set intentions for the new year.
A belated birthday celebration brought me to brunch with friends, and we got onto the subject of how it seems we can delineate our lives not necessarily in terms of annual—or decadal—milestones, but rather in terms of where we are in the trajectory of our “good girl” lives. We are all close enough in age to share many cultural touchstones, especially around women’s issues. Good girl was, for many of us, the one who obeyed her parents, did her best in school, and volunteered. Most boys back then hoped that we were secretly naughty girls, but good girls didn’t really always know what naughty was. To me, “naughty” was sneaking out of my first-floor bedroom window when I was 17 years old to eat cold French fries and walk the dark neighborhood laughing too loudly at 1 a.m. with my two best guy friends.
It has been an almost seamless transfer to adulthood as a good girl, which morphed into giving much of our time and energy to others. Later, I met different iterations of myself as “good girl” in the workplace that were genderless. The first one was “team player” who goes along to get along and unfortunately winds up doing most of the work and accepting all of the blame when a project goes awry. Then, there was a passive aggressive phase, where I believed I knew best and found myself sighing and saying things like, “Well, if you think that will work…” to colleagues and friends. Luckily I left her behind (mostly) before coming to Flagstaff. The most recent phase is the “fine” phase, when I say everything is fine, but it really isn’t. How am I feeling? Fine! How’s work going? Fine! Don’t know what to make for dinner? Fine! I’ll just look at Pinterest and figure it out.
After brunch, I thought about the iteration of good girl and, as I write this, I’m not exactly sure I have settled on a phase that I might be in now. I still feel the lingering pressures of good girl in different aspects of my life. One thing I am certain of is that attempting to be a good girl at all times made me miss out on some interesting opportunities and possible adventures. Reflecting on this reminded me of an article written by Joshua Rothman several years ago. He spent time reading different books about the psychological impact of the “allure of our unlived lives.”
It is definitely alluring at this stage in my life to wonder about paths not taken. For example, what if I had my first graduate school mentor in 2001 who encouraged me to get my PhD and teach? I can remember that I laughed at his suggestion and told him I wasn’t smart enough. He disagreed, but my own intellectual low self-esteem prevented me from learning what I know now—that I am a pretty good teacher, actually. Having rejected this notion once before somehow primed me to listen to another mentor who encouraged me to try teaching. Sounds familiar, I thought. This time, I shoved my fears down and stepped forward to try something new.
Rothman writes that, “there will be moments when, for good or for ill, we feel confronted by our unrealized possibilities; they may even, through their persistence, shape us.” I’m curious about this idea. My list of unrealized possibilities is (thankfully) pretty short. What intrigues me most now is looking forward. The ongoing lesson of the pandemic for me is something like how do I keep moving forward and what else do I want to accomplish in my “one wild and precious life?”
I have goals as everyone else does, but as I age I realize that my attempts can be considered successes and not just when I achieve a perfect end result.
What’s next? I’m not really sure. I found teaching. I celebrated another birthday. I woke up from anesthesia after my procedure. This week, brunch, happy hour, and writing dates with friends. This seems good to me. I don’t think I could have imagined a better life than this for myself when I was younger. I’m trying not to live at all in the past, nor too much in the future. The allure is not the unlived life, but rather leaving behind expectations of being a good girl and learning to appreciate better what I have at this very moment.
