Yesterday I laughed.
I talked about baking and pastry and sparkly red toenails. I made a cocktail without measuring anything because recipes are guidelines and sometimes the taste is in the “what if.” I ordered pizza. I flirted. I laughed until my mood genuinely lifted.
Yesterday I also cried.
Not the delicate, cinematic kind of crying where one perfect tear rolls down your cheek. I mean the whole-face, swollen-eyes, dog-starts-looking-concerned kind.
Because underneath all the laughter, I was hurting.
I recently lost a job I never intended to leave, and now I am searching for another one at a stage of my life when I thought I would be looking toward retirement, not starting over. Every application carries a little hope with it. Every interview carries more. And when another rejection comes, it isn’t merely, “We chose another candidate.”
It’s another door closing when I desperately need one to open.
At the same time, I’ve dipped a toe back into dating, which apparently comes with its own assortment of unanswered questions, awkward pauses, vulnerability, and occasional sparkly-red research experiments.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it yesterday, I caught myself thinking something I didn’t particularly like:
Please, please give me attention.
My immediate instinct was to judge myself for it.
I’m 56 years old. I’m independent. I’ve survived things I once couldn’t imagine surviving. Surely I should be beyond needing somebody to notice me.
Except that’s nonsense.
Wanting connection isn’t weakness.
Wanting someone to reach for me without always being the one reaching first isn’t neediness.
Wanting to matter in somebody else’s day doesn’t erase all the ways I’ve learned to matter in my own.
Sometimes loneliness just knocks louder when you’re already bruised.
I also realized that the woman laughing about pastry and sparkly toes wasn’t pretending. And the woman who later felt depressed, angry, foolish, and lost wasn’t suddenly revealing the “real” version of me.
They’re both me.
Feeling playful doesn’t cancel depression.
Feeling hopeful doesn’t mean I won’t crash later.
Laughing doesn’t mean everything is okay, and hurting doesn’t mean none of the laughter was real.
Maybe that’s something we don’t say often enough.
We love stories about resilience after the fact. We like the tidy version where the difficult thing happens, the heroine learns an Important Life Lesson, inspirational music swells, and she emerges stronger.
Real life is considerably messier.
Sometimes resilience looks like filling out another application.
Sometimes it’s deciding you don’t have to figure out the man, the job, the future, or the meaning of the latest plot twist tonight.
Sometimes it’s pizza and butter pecan ice cream.
Sometimes it’s baking because your hands need somewhere to put the restless energy.
Sometimes it’s crying because you’re tired of being strong enough to handle things you never wanted to handle in the first place.
And sometimes it’s waking up the next morning to find your Chihuahua sitting in a pile of blankets with her face turned toward the sunshine, looking as though she has personally mastered inner peace while you were asleep.
Maybe she has the right idea.
I don’t have to resolve every uncertainty just because uncertainty makes me uncomfortable.
I don’t have to turn every rejection into a valuable growth experience.
I don’t have to choose the nearest possibility simply because I’m desperate for an answer.
And I don’t have to perform the cheerful version of myself to prove that I’m okay.
Today I can simply sit in the sunshine for a while.
Both things can be true.
I can be scared about what’s next and still curious about the “what if.”
Maybe that’s enough for this Sunday. 🩷
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