The turn of a phrase.

For all of my life, up to this point, I have thought "ignorance is bliss" to be the most spectacularly stupid phrase. I question, and seek out answers, and want to know why all of the moving parts move the way that they do. I enjoy knowing why things are the way they are. My brain jots down random trivia and stores it with the other garbage I've collected over the years, like how to sing certain songs in french I learned in childhood. I could comfortably say, "it is the way it is," because I knew why it was that way.

But I can't help feeling, lately, maybe if I knew less, understood less, felt less, wanted less, expected less from life; maybe I could be as content as everyone else is. The happily coupled people, and the ones who know exactly where they're headed in life, and the ones who are just happy to be alive and raising hell, or, hell, raising chickens. I feel like my head is crammed full of uselessness that has alienated me from happiness. From contentment. From finding my place in my own life.

My life is whizzing by at the speed of light, and I'm just sat here shrugging because it doesn't even feel like it belongs to me. I have outsmarted myself. Ignorance could be bliss. I get it now.

I want to unlearn everything. I want to unlearn mistrust, and fear, and abandonment; cynicism, regret. I want to unlearn how to use humor and sarcasm and ambivalence as a shield. I want to unlearn overthinking and anxiety and how to blurt out every last thought that runs through my unfiltered tongue. I want to unlearn all of these coping mechanisms, and start over in a world in which they were never necessary to my survival.

"But then, you wouldn't be you," my brain says. "How would that work?"

I don't know.
Ignorance could be bliss.

Crazy little thing called Age.

I like to think that age is just some number; an indication of the number of years one has traversed the human condition, and precious little else of significance is weighted within. It would explain why I seldom feel like a bone fide "grown up" despite that I'm nearing the {holy shit} 39th year since my birth, or that I have a child that just last week reached the {holy shit x 2} 20th year since his own. I have a friend that is in her 60s, and was just today flirted with by someone not much older than my 20 year old. And it's exactly at that point where my brain puts on the screeching halt of the brakes and calls me a hypocrite.

It's not because I have any interest in being flirted with by anyone other than my spouse, (I don't), but because my first thought is immediately "he's just a baby." It's some weird part flattery and a whole lot of feeling like a pedophile. And I didn't even do anything wrong! Was so oblivious to the whole affair that it wasn't until I got home with my goods and receipt that I realized that there was a phone number scrawled across a scrap of paper. It made me laugh. Out loud. And it also makes me genuinely feel like a great big jerk that I can't take a compliment without dissecting it and trying to find the ulterior motive waiting to jump out and bite me.

Dismissing age as just a number, though, erases the actual experience of all of that living that has happened in that span of time. Things both big and small that conclude into the  amalgamation of the person that we are becoming. Certainly, I would be offended if someone dismissed me as "just a baby" because I am arbitrarily younger than they are. That they would be moved to laughter because I found them attractive? Wow. That sucks. I have lived a lot in my not-quite-(gulp)-forty years; I have a lot to offer, damn it! That said, I often wonder if I will always feel like a kid. Am I the only grown up that feels like a kid tossed unceremoniously out into the world, just trying to keep my head above the rising tide of numbers gathering below me? And do I even *want* to feel every second of those numbers? [No. No, I don't.]

Here's the thing, though: when it comes to matters of more-than-friends, I think that's where the water starts getting murky for me, and I guess lots of other folks. My mom once freaked out, just a couple of years ago, in fact, that I find some guys her own age attractive. "He's an old man!" I volleyed back, " Who cares. LOOK AT HIM." (Rob Lowe, you still have it; I have thought so since I was a pre-teen.) But speaking of pre-teens, do I want my own daughter to ever entertain thoughts about guys her mother's age at any point in her life? Oh Hell No! I'm totally fine with riding the hypocrisy train where that's concerned.

Oh well, it is all what it is. The human condition is equal parts hilarious and horrifying. I guess most of the time I'm just glad to be along for the ride.

I was temporarily out of order.

I used to be pretty good at saying the right thing when someone needed to hear it. I have been the go-to girl for advice, anecdotes, a shoulder to lean on. But, my friends, I saw all of that change last night. I sat, horrified, as I saw my fingers type all of the wrong words, incapable of shutting the fuck up. After I apologized, I ended up slinking off to bed, feeling like a giant asshole. I still feel like a giant asshole this morning over it, and hope that my friend will forgive me for scaring her worse instead of being the rational voice I usually am, or try to be.