I am now fifty years old.

I am a single Roman numeral old. 

For most humans, this happens four times.  At one, five, ten, and fifty years.  For the rare centurion, five.  I don’t know what I will be, but I know that I am now fifty, and I’m certain that this milestone FEELS different.  Folks always ask, at multiples of ten particularly, “Does it feel different?”  It never has for me, except this time.

Of course the aches, pains, and added pounds after five-plus years of extraordinary personal trauma, loss, and existential pressure contribute significantly.  My back seems to have decided that, yes, fifty is the year wherein you need to consider a daily or at least regular regimen of NSAIDs.  My eyes, at forty gently threatening the need for bifocals, now demand transitional trifocals.  Between forty and forty-five, I focused desperately (yes, that’s the word I mean) on being thin. Body dysmorphia is treacherous and I wish it on no human.  I over-trained (e.g. running 5-6x/week as if constantly training for a half-marathon, yoga 3-4x/week, boot camps 3x/week, plus CrossFit-type personal training daily) until the day the earth and my body said, “enough!” I fractured my left ankle running while hate-listening to a podcast of two people I’d previously liked, if not respected.  Kids, don’t hate-listen to podcasts or radio.  Ever, really.  It’s not healthy.  Particularly don’t do it if you’re out on the roads biking or running.  The vitriol steals every bit of focus.  (Notably, I broke my ankle precisely on my forty-fifth birthday and not long before I understood that I was a multiply neurodivergent person.  Today, beyond not wanting the neurochemicals of hate and rage coursing through my body, I also know that my nervous system cannot handle it.  When shifted into threat mode [a.k.a. sympathetic, or survival nervous system] my frontal cortex shuts down.  All of ours do in times of great fear and/or anxiety.  They call it fight, flight, freeze, and/or appease, which captures it quite nicely.  Part of my multiple neurodivergences include developmental trauma, anxiety and depression, which changed my nervous system and caused me, along with many others, perhaps you, too, to exist in threat nervous system for extended periods.  Which is very much not good.  But I severely digress. Deep breath, everyone…okay?…)  I recommend not hate-listening to cis male bigots and fascists. Cool?  Cool. 

Where was I?  Ah, yes…I broke my ankle on my forty-fifth, six months before COVID hit.  No running for SIX months.  No gyms (…ever again, by the way. I’ll never be able to re-enter. I can’t breath properly with a well-fitted mask while exercising and almost everyone has stopped masking altogether and also taking simple precautions like staying home while sick, testing themselves, and not putting others at risk.  But that is a different soap box for a different day.  Again, I digress…).  Since then?  My body cannot do the things I forced it to do all the way up to September sixteenth, twenty-nineteen  And today? I want to honor my body.  This vessel I’ve been granted by the universe and which has brought me all the way to L. Not meaning “take the L,” as in, “the loss,” though I certainly did, whew boy!  No, I am sitting here today at L.  That’s fifty using a Roman numeral.  (See, I got back to my point?!  Thanks for sticking around for the journey to it, lol.)

Fifty feels physically different, and as you just read, that’s certainly not all Fifty’s fault!

It’s not just that though.  

As I mentioned, forty-five to fifty brought both personal and existential drama and trauma.  In the parlance of those who play and consult tarot, it was a prolonged period of The Tower.  For those who aren’t familiar, The Tower, pictorially, points towards sudden disruptions, major changes, some amount of devastation and pain, with the promise of transformation if or when one makes it through the experiences.  Perhaps in the future, I’ll explore this period of The Tower, along with three other tarot cards that have provided me the wisdom of countless many who came before me and made it through.  That, to me, by the way, is what tarot is.  A collection of numerical, pictorial, and otherwise symbolic cards to be played in the process of gathering some wisdom from human ancestors with immense accumulated wisdom.  That’s it, for me.  I am neither predicting nor conjuring, though I won’t cast my eyes askance at those endeavors.  I live by the dictum, “I don’t know…and honestly, neither does anybody.”  Greg’s agnosticism, lol.  Yet again, I digress…we can contemplate The Tower, the Five of Cups, the Two of Wands, and The Hermit at a later date.  For now, the key is the gathering, assimilation, and synthesis of accumulated wisdom.

Fifty feels different because I now recognize and much better understand my lived experiences and the wisdom I contain from these years conscious on the planet.  My own life…has provided me wisdom.  It seems like such an obvious insight, and cognitively it is.  Experientially, however?  Wisdom is earned, and I finally feel like I’ve earned this confidence and right to exist fully and out loud.

I felt no wiser at thirty or forty.  If not for the obstacles between forty and today, I believe fifty would have been no different.  I no longer want to exist in the emotional region of “if not” or “if only.”  The reality is…here I am, right here, right now, much wiser than I was when ran down the hill and route I now call “the ankle breaker,” and am grateful for it.

I’m also grateful for you spending a few minutes with me asynchronously.  I’m sure there will be more coming related to this milestone.  Until then, I offer love and validation.

This is fifty, part one of x.

-Greg