I was on my morning walk when it hit me. Here I am, 68 years old – 68, y’all, that’s old – and I don’t even have a kitchen of my own. The house has a kitchen, a nice big kitchen, and theoretically it’s shared space with my daughter and the grands. But I don’t have any cabinet space in it. And I don’t feel comfortable using it unless they’re gone.

Then I thought, and I don’t have a car of my own. I can’t just jump in my little car and drive off to wherever I want to go, I have to check schedules and plan around MP. Now granted, he mostly uses it to run to the grocery or for doctor appointments. But still.

Plus, he and I are sort of stuffed into one part of the house, yes, like sausages. The house needs work that I can’t afford to get done. I’ve got a bunch of junky stuff cluttering up the space, but there also isn’t enough space. I just quit having a cleaner because we need to save some money, but that means more for me to do. My only way out is to move to a different country.

I’m making enough money for now – but my daughter’s not. And that’s not my problem, but it is, since we’re sharing a house and I care about my grandkids having a good life.

I was thinking about doing some more traveling – I could probably scrape up the money to travel, and I have a friend in Africa who I’ve always wanted to visit. So I got all psyched up about that – and then I remembered I have very little vacation time. Nope. Travel is not an option.

What was I thinking? How did I end up here?

I went to a reiki session last week – it was a gift from my sister. I enjoyed it so much and could really feel warmth and different sensations even when she wasn’t actually touching me. At the end, she told me that my head chakra was “bright white, just lovely.” My heart chakra seemed a bit – not tight, but like it needed more space. My sacral chakra was wide open, very airy and lots of energy there (which would be creativity and sexuality – who knows where that energy’s going, cause I ain’t feeling it!) But my root chakra was “intense’ and I needed to work on it, maybe do more grounding meditations.

I had to look all this stuff up, but apparently the root chakra is safety, security, stability, survival. I thought, well, that could be because I’m old – who knows how long I’ve got left! Or it could be financial insecurity – like, what if I lose my job? Or it could be fear of where I’ll be in another 5 years. Or it could be related to climate change or the incredibly awful political situation in the US. I mean, there are lots of reasons why that could be a problem.

Anyhow. I was pretty deep into my whine and I just thought, fuck it. All of this is accurate, but there’s no point in brooding about it. All I can do is look for the things I can change. And appreciate the things I do have.

But the real wake-up moment came from a Facebook post.

At first when I read it, I thought, well, that’s certainly not me! And I just felt this sad sense of longing. Like maybe I had once been that person, or could have been, but am not that woman now.

But honestly – on a good day, I am that woman. Maybe not all of it, not all the time, but some of the time, I am. The things I don’t have are mostly material and I chose to give them away. That’s ok. That’s not the measure of my worth. And if I don’t have all the things I want – time to travel, more money – I have lots of other things to treasure. Like this space and all of you.

So I didn’t settle in to have cheese with my whine. I just nodded to the very real missing elements of my life and moved on.