It’s a fear that feels similar to going away on a long trip and agonising, sitting on the plane, that you’ve forgotten something really important.
Not that you can do anything about it at that point, 30,000 feet up in the air. But you go through the range of emotions as if it’s already happened.
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve gone back to the house from the bus stop three times because I couldn’t remember if I had turned off the clothes iron. Several hundred thousand dollars up in smoke; do I still pay the mortgage?; how much am I insured? How do I rebuild my wardrobe?
Sometimes I comfort myself with the fact that in my bag (and I bring a big bag to work everyday), I have my Macbook, my pills 💊 enough for a week, and a toiletry bag with perfume, anti-perspirant and moisturisers. I could find a temporary place somewhere and literally start all over again wth just a laptop, an Internet connection and a week’s worth of stuff that guarantees you don’t look or feel any worse than you already are.
Appearances are important to me. I look in the mirror and I feel calmed. That person looking back at me is what I’ve made that person to be- I have some degree of control over that.
The year feels like a fire that has raged out of control and now I am looking at the embers and thinking, it’s gone. But what’s gone really? The thing is when you’re middle-aged, everything becomes an accounting- your age, your mortgage, your income in 5 years, your blood pressure and time itself.
(at this point, I’ve actually lost my train of thought but I must admit that I was never good at making essays so I’m leaving this here as is, and moving on! Time is ticking! We can’t waste our time expounding on arguments and believing that resolving them on paper does any one any good.)
