Almost Forty

Almost forty. And for the first time in my life the woman making the decisions is the same one who has to live with them.

That sounds simple. It isn’t. For years the decisions were someone else’s. The big ones and the small ones. What to eat. Where to go. Whether to speak. Whether to stay. Whether to shrink just a little bit more so the room could hold his ego and my existence at the same time.

Now the room is mine.

I’m not where I thought I’d be at forty. Nobody is. But the gap between expectation and reality is wider for women like me. Women who lost a decade to someone else’s control. Women who are starting their real lives at an age when other people are reviewing theirs.

I don’t have savings. I have debt and determination. I don’t have a partner. I have a long-distance love that makes me question everything I thought I knew about trust. I don’t have a plan. I have a kitchen table and a laptop and two children who are happier than they’ve ever been.

Forty is supposed to be a milestone. A moment of reckoning. An inventory. Here’s what you’ve achieved. Here’s what you haven’t. Here’s where you are versus where you should be.

But should be is a weapon other people use. And I’m done being weaponised.

Here’s where I am. I’m in a house that answers to me. I’m running businesses I built from nothing. I’m raising children who breathe. I’m writing stories at 1am because the truth demands to be written down and I’ve never been good at ignoring demands.

I’m not healed. I’m not finished. I’m not the after photo in someone else’s before and after.

I’m in the middle. Still building. Still learning. Still catching my reflection in microwave doors at 2am and slowly, very slowly, starting to recognise the woman looking back.

Almost forty.

And finally, finally, mine.