It is the end of August – the light is sharpening in its angle and the sun is moving ever lower on the tree line each day. I did something wild and left my public school teaching job about 2 weeks ago, and here I sit, in my favorite armchair, which I share with my favorite dog, wondering.

We moved to Maine one year and two months ago. Moving cross country in your forties is no small feat and it has been harder than I thought it would be. Peoples’ lives have changed and everyone has aged. Houses are so expensive, if you can even get one. Wages, if you’re lucky, just barely keep up with the costs. There is this other aspect of middle-aged life that I am curious about, too. It is the sadness; I wonder where it comes from, and does everyone share it?

With middle age comes a lot of experiences, and I think quite a bit of loss. There are a few people that I know who have made it to their mid forties without significant losses of loved ones, but, on the whole, it seems that the decade comes with an acceptance that people you love are going to die, and sometimes, a lot of them are going to die, closely together. Some of them will be old, and so their deaths will be understandable, but some will be young, and will die so quickly that it is like whiplash when they go.

My friend Kate passed away last month, a week shy of her 50th birthday. She died after being sick for 11 months. I will write more about Kate later; she deserves a deep-dive into my many times and experiences with her and learnings from her, but suffice it to say for today, her death scared the shit out of me. I didn’t know that that could happen: that you could be diagnosed and pass away in 11 months. It cemented a decision I had already made to jump into the unknown.

Here I am. Seems a little nuts. I own a house and in a week won’t have any health insurance. Somehow, it will work out. My husband is such a sweet person but he, too, is struggling with his own middle-aged sadness. I am not sure where his comes from, because he has trouble identifying his emotions. I think he was taught at a young age that emotions were a weak enemy to be vanquished and sent away; he did that, to his current peril. He says his brain feels like mud. I worry about him and want him to have dreams again.

This place is so seasonal, and here we are, in a transition again. A great friend and I were talking today about how fall feels early, but it’s possible that it just feels that way because we spent most of our lives living in a place with no seasons (Texas). I found a red maple leaf on the driveway two days ago, and today I saw an entire red maple tree on the drive home.

Today I drove into Northeast Harbor to go to work and was struck with a feeling that I don’t feel about it the same way that I did before. I am not certain that I have lost some magic feeling, or just that my feelings on the whole are a bit muddled right now. I am worried that I might struggle to be happy anywhere, and what that means to me. I am curious about how I find peace in accepting myself. How do I keep my inherent loneliness at bay? Or, alternatively, how do I welcome it in and befriend the feeling? My husband and I were speaking about that yesterday; about being people who have always felt lonely, and yet, are together.

Does it come from my 0-3 formative experiences? Is it genes? Is it the crazy stressful harsh and intense family of origin I come from? Probably. But what do I do with this?

I am working on a book that is based on many of the writings I posted here about 10 years ago. Over the next month or so, I will be removing those posts as this blog goes in a new direction; this version of me, not the older version. So many lives in this one life, if we are lucky. One of my mentors, one of my professors from grad school, told me to write everything down. I had said that to someone else, so I have decided to take my own advice, and his, and be here now, writing and musing. I think that I am finding some kernels of truth within the annals of my mind, but it is a deep labyrinth in there and will take some time.

Thanks for the love,