#84

It feels like I have written everything that I could possibly write.

It feels like I have done whatever I could possibly do - for myself. There are no more things which I need to do in order to prove anything to myself. And now, now - it weirdly feels, that for now, there is no future, not in an awful way, but in a way in which yeah - I am alright with wherever I am in my life. 

This is not an unusual thing for me - I am really without ambition. I suppose the most ambitious I have ever been has been to do what is right as much as I can. This journey has led me on to some very painful paths, but I have mostly regretted nothing. However, this new phase of my life is a bit unlike the previous phase in which I have wished for a boring life. In my previous phase, I felt like I had to put the breaks on the crazy which I seem to have been programmed to pursue and who knows where that would have led me, really, but now, now... it seems like life has chosen the not crazy for me. 

Of course, the active crazy may have been deselected, but the natural crazy is now taking place. When I say natural crazy I am in a phase of life now where everyone is either sick or dying. Being in good health seems to be a non option. Even for myself, having just emerged from the menopausal nightmare, even I have been dragged through the mill. Hopefully for the last time before the next time.

But having all this dying around me has made me realise even MORE how our of touch as a culture we are about dying. Dying is something which we will have to encounter whatever happens - and that is directly connected to how we live.

Having always had this one foot in connection with death, I have always tried to live my life as if I would be dying tomorrow. In a way I don't save anything up. I have loved, laughed, drank, partied, traveled, read, been friends as if there is no tomorrow for myself. Always asking myself what would it be like on my deathbed, what would be the one thing I'd regret the most?

Death though in this culture, possibly more so than Singapore, is such a difficult thing for people. It is possibly the one thing that differentiates where I live now and Singapore. 

I was also talking to Kelly about aging. We really need to take it back - especially women. In my own lifetime, women have gone from being invisible to being supervisible when they age. It is ridiculous. If a woman doesn't look like she is 18 when she is 50 this is seen as some personal failure. A realistic looking 50 - 65 needs to happen for women. We are no Madonna, or Jennifer Aniston - and yet these women are held up as some kind of ideal we now have to aspire to.

It is so difficult. And it is even worse if you are a young woman - or even younger woman. Your role models are now so toxic that you don't even know what you are supposed to be. It wasn't supposed to be like this. I think that it is a personal failure really that my generation of women haven't been, as a collective, able to create a space for younger women who are coming after us to say, this is what we can look like. This is who we can be. It is crazy. Really, it is insane.

How did I end up here? Oh yes... being in a place where I no longer have to prove anything any more. It is such a liberating feeling. It sort of feels like I can do anything. ANYTHING at all.

And so I shall. It is so so wonderful to feel the possibilities rise once again. And in many ways because I have nothing to prove, I am now walking the path of one again. It is quite something, really.