50 Today...

This is a poem that I wrote on the day I turned 50. Like many other women, I was dreading that day and wondering what my life would become afterwards. It's not easy to grow older! And so, I sat down that day and the words just came out. I'm putting it up here on my website because I want to share what I felt like before this dramatic rebirth. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has felt this way.

I am fifty today
My heart muscle is flabby
My stomach lies beside me on the bed like a deflated basketball when I
lie on my side
I see no reason to shave my legs anymore
or get a new hairdo or use make-up or paint my nails
or get out of bed

Life has recently given me way too much free time
to ponder what I'm even here for
To review my defeats
obsess over my mistakes
grieve my losses
To feel whatever pain still remains burning at my core
and to wonder if there is a future worth living for me

I don't know anymore what I want to be or do or have;
everything is at a complete standstill except
that I feel like I'm in an ever-expanding sinkhole
which gets harder and harder to climb out of.......

Why is it that my life must be emptied out again
before I can figure out how to fill it up?
I swear I'm not depressed though.