I am 60 years old. Some of us who have reached this age console ourselves by saying "60 is the new 40, or 50, or maybe 55..." Really, it is 60 years old. The body doesn't hold up as well as it used to. Drastic measures are taken by more than a few in my age bracket to mask the wear and tear of 60. A nip here, tuck there, a stitch to tighten it up...
So I guess falling in love at 60 is worth speaking of. How many of us ever have that opportunity? Most are in marriages, content or otherwise, maybe more in love than ever before. The children are grown up and gone, you can have sex whenever it's convenient. No worry about the children bopping in at an inopportune moment, no babies to start crying and interrupt the amorous moment. If you are in a relationship or marriage or together with someone, the possibilities are only limited by your mind.
What happens when you get divorced at 60? For me, it was devastating. The end had been coming for a long time. I am a child of adversity. Fighting, bickering, and arguing were family staples growing up. So, I'm used to adversity, maybe to the point that I don't notice it sometimes. Or choose to ignore it. Adversity was built in to the marriage in the form of spiritual differences. They could not be overcome.
Then there is the derailing of my psyche. That started five years ago and is ending as we speak. I have been diagnosed bipolar, ADD Without Mention of Hyperactivity, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Chronic Anxiety. I will own up to the ADD and Chronic Anxiety. I'm done with the PTSD and a psychologist told me I was not bipolar. I instantly bought what he was selling. I had already stopped taking Lamictal for being bipolar. It constipated me. I hated it. My emotions were squeezed to the middle. No ups, no downs. That's what it is supposed to do. It eliminated most emotion for me and any emotion I did have I always cried. Happy, sad, pissed off, weirded out, whatever, I cried. No withdrawals from that one once I quit taking it. I started to shit again. That was the big payoff. Unfortunately, I was prescribed stimulants to combat ADD (without mention of...) and benzodiazapines for anxiety and Trazadone for sleep.
I took Adderal XR, the extended release version of the amphetamine, Adderall. I took that for about a year. Problem was, I couldn't control it. Once it started to release into your system, all that was left to do was hang on for 6 hours and then brace yourself for a letdown in energy and mood. I hated it. No control. Taking benzos to get rid of the anxiety caused by the Adderall. Taking Trazadone to sleep. Wild ride, whooping circle of activity repeated every day. Minimal control.
Then I asked for the non extended release. It was hard to get. Impossible at the time. They could get Ritalin, though. I made the switch. That was a ride compared to Adderall. I went on the ride for quite a few months. Ritalin is a nervous drug that works. The side effects are horrible. Adderall became available again so I switched back. Then my dose was upped to 80mgs a day. I was singing and whistling, hollering, randomly playing air guitar to a song only I could hear, stuff like that. Then, the shit hit the fan.
My wife at the time informed me that she was divorcing me. I could say it was a bombshell, that it dropped on me like a sudden rain shower or lightning storm. Not really. At the time I thought I was done. 58 and getting divorced. Crap. I guess that's when the shitstorm hit. ("Randy, there's going to be a shitstorm when those two get out...") I was unceremoniously moved out while at work. There is an apartment in the next building and I was living in it. Neither could afford to move so the arrangement became long term. For a while, anyway. Eventually, I began looking at houses. It was frustrating to think that I was going to lose my house. I was afraid. I didn't want to move. I was psychically burned out. My brain was mush. I had three concussions in one year. I had trouble speaking. I had to talk very slowly to be understood and to get out what I wanted to say. Bad enough having to brace up for a divorce but losing a house and not being able to adequately express my frustration, I was quietly losing it. I needed to find a way to absorb the pain and move on. For a few dark winter months, maybe all three of them, I would find solace in the utility bathroom in the hallway to the pottery studio. The light switch is outside the room. I switched it off. As I was pulling the door shut, I was sitting down on the toilet, lid down. It was no doubt about it pitch black dark. Even after a few minutes of acclimation, the oblique was all I could see. Seated, I placed my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands. I prayed for the pain to go away. Nothing else, just the pain. It takes time. I knew where I was on the it takes time continuum and that's why I prayed for the pain to go away. I knew it wouldn't just yet but would on down the line. Even so, it wasn't much help to know that.
The dark bathroom was my salvation. One night I left the light on. I was looking at myself in the mirror. I don't remember thinking anything significant until the person in the mirror looked back at me. That's when it occurred to me. I said, "Hey, I still have you!" to the guy in the mirror. That is when I started to feel better. I'm back in the house now but sometimes when I'm in the studio, I'll go in there and pee in the toilet for old times sake.
And now we're back to the part of the conversation where I will speak about falling in love at 60. Number one, I didn't think it would happen. I wanted it to happen but it doesn't just happen because you want it to. The world is a complex, sophisticated place. Just about every aspect of our life can be done online. School, bank, utilities, credit cards, etc. At 60, I didn't want to hang out in bars or where ever people go these days. I do like coffee shops. The caffeinated euphoria of a coffee shop is contagious even before you get your euphoric laden highly caffeinated drink and add to the collective. As part of the more or less amicable split, I received ownership of the dog, a Border Collie named Banjo. Banjo is a black and white BC with a superb spirit and gentle personality. He virtually loves everybody. When he wags his tail, it starts at his shoulders. He was my companion. I still take him almost everywhere.
Where does a geek meet people? Online. Facebook has an online dating site. Online Dating. What a concept. I think I read that in 2011, 12 million couples who met online married. Online dating accounts for a significant number of successful relationships. The concept is good if one is honest. Once you start playin', forget about it. You gotta be honest, with yourself and with others. It works much better that way.
There are a ton of people with profiles on online dating sites. You can choose a site by religion, genre, age group, just about any sort of group of people you can imagine have an online dating site. I put my profile up on a site for people aged 50 and older. I met someone. We communicated via email until it was decided to call and speak to each other. Then we Skyped. The situation was progressing. We hit a bump, then another. We worked together and fixed the problems. That is huge. Imagine the odds of meeting someone anywhere that would work together to stay together! We made it through the Thanksgiving holiday in one piece. I don't know if Christmas was mentioned before I left her house or after I returned to East Wenatchee. Either way, there as some tension about the holiday and whether she would have to work and whether I would come back.
I did go back, this time driving across three and a half states with Banjo in the back seat. The days spent with her during the Christmas holiday are days that my life changed in a totally unforeseen way. I could not have imagined what happened. My life has had moments of surrealistic clarity almost as if i were an outside observer, watching myself from across the room. That didn't happen this time. What did happen is that I found someone cared for me, enough to make sure I took a good look at what I was doing to me. Yup, the Adderall comes in to play again here. I lost the Adderall and haven't taken any since Christmas 2012. It was one of my Christmas presents. Not the best one, though, that one was laying next to me in bed. That was clarity, looking her in the eye, her brown/hazel eye peering at me over a fold in her pillow. I knew I was in deep. And yes, I appreciate the concern shown me in alerting me to my emaciated condition. Who else would do that? No one else did. Sure, the Office Manager brought it to my attention more than once but I never listen to that anyway. I knew I was wasting away. I wondered how I would stop and when. I wondered if I was doing permanent damage to something I probably needed, like a thought process. I weighed one hundred and thirty fucking pounds when I arrived for Christmas. I didn't eat much while travelling. It showed. The person I had been corresponding with, had visited for Thanksgiving, and was now visiting again at Christmas, took it upon herself to let me now I was in poor shape. I was in worse than poor shape. I was strung out.
Now I'm not.
I feel much better, thank you.
We have continued to communicate either texting or talking on the phone, sometimes twice a day. We will Skype tomorrow for the first time since I returned. We have given our love to each other. I am enriched and feel vibrantly positive about my life. We fit fine. Physically, psychically, cosmically, karmically, emotionally, heartfully, honestly, genuinely...it all fits. It is a we thing, not a me and her thing. A we thing. It's us. We love it. It is nothing but good.
jambalaya with invisible cat
I am eager for this phase of my life. We're in love.
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