I Smashed My Precious Wine Glass and I Enjoyed It
I'm about to turn 45 and I want to blow shit up.
I was taking the roasted, sweet potatoes out of the oven, a voracious animal ready to devour a second helping and knew but didn’t care that the glass baking dish was probably still too hot to grab with the flimsy, wet kitchen towel lazily wrapped around its edge. Ready to burn it was, I tossed it abruptly onto the stove where my precious little wine glass was standing on the far ledge clean from her prior night’s bath.
I heard the crash and new instantly her cup would hold no more. Instead of feeling angry at my carelessness and sad at the departure of my beloved, I felt a devilish smile twist my face, then my body into a childlike delight.
Was that pleasure I felt gazing at my sweet, crystal beauty all cracked up and broken?
I began to think about what else needed a good smashing and how I might display the glass with her broken bits in my apartment as some kind of note to self about what I need more of in my life.
To be like her, happily broken.
I’ve been restless as hell for the past week. Something is brewing.
I feel
- anxious, angry, sad
-thirsty, happy, hungry
-curious, confused, open
-isolated, empty, lonely
-hopeful, connected, grateful
I am in touch with many of my desires and yet I am feeling terribly constricted.
I am in a soup of unfolding opposites, lost and found. Found, then lost.
Tic-tok. Tic-tok. Tic-
I have the feeling that something is going to blow.
Not Hiroshima style, reckless and devastating or temporary and inconsequential, like a teenager setting off a firecracker.
All day yesterday, this emotional body brew had me wanting to jump out of my skin. Terrorized by something I can’t put my finger on, I felt on the brink of insanity. Deep dream crying and restless sleep had me working through the night.
I probably need more rest but I don’t know how to do that yet. I think I need to try out some new things, but I’m struggling to act. I feel the ticking of the clock without any clear arrival.
Is this a mid-life crisis?
I wonder about this flight I want to take from my body — am I trying to escape something, to gloss over my emotions, feeling myself only half-way, like I sometimes do or is the real problem my body?
I am wondering if she is too small, whether she can hold this raging, unquenchable fire that burns me on the daily alongside my fear of time running out and disappearing forever.
Tik-tok. Tik-tok. Tik-
Where does the time go? What is this life for?
I met with a healer last week. She said I need to exercise more to make sure I’m releasing all my energy. It will help me focus better. She said, “It’s like your energy is at a 10 and your body is big enough to hold only a 5.
How do I stretch these bones of mine?, I ask.
“I want a bigger life!”, I hear myself scream.
But do I really need one?, another voice asks.
I am not in a position to answer this. My hunch is yes and also no. It’s time to ride out the wave, not figure anything out, let time show the way.
What I do know though — I want to wreck havoc on my suffocating routines, to dismantle my inner status quo, to give less fucks, to explode like a goddamn volcano.
Although it may sound this way, I am not in the mood to do something stupid and impulsive, like leave Berlin without a plan which is what I’ve been feeling I want to do as of late.
That’s not the kind of blow up I need.
Instead, a deeper, softer, more uncensored kind of honesty is calling me. To be radically myself, to shatter without giving a shit, to jump freely and splash hard, to let the ripples take me somewhere I have never imagined before.
I want more courage, less tension.
More spontaneity, less head math.
I would love to be moved by something or someone. I would love to be taken by a giant, to a foreign country and drink up his forest and eat up the land. I want my mind to be blown to pieces so that I can’t find myself anymore.
I want to be taken and I also…don’t want to do a damn thing.
Except for one, the only small action that feels clear as day in this moment.
I shoot a message to my boyfriend about everything I’m feeling, not hiding behind masks or analytical jargon, not beating around the bush nor vomiting out my insides with indecipherable, impossible to connect dots. I get straight to the point about what I need in this moment.
More honesty, less hiding. I want connection. I want to open. I want to feel his opening. His guts, my guts laid out on our ledge.
I felt scared doing that, I had no clue if he would receive me. Even though the history shows he probably would, I thought now is the moment when I am going to be just too much.
Then I called a friend, breaking my customary strategy of processing things first alone, and we went for a walk to spill.
Hiding is incredibly comfortable and terrifyingly boring.
In this moment, I’d rather be left or not received. I’d rather look stupid, fall on my face, feel my godawful shame than be bored shitless and constrained, pissing my life away into a pail that no one is going to notice 100 years from now.
It felt good to blow out my scattered, confused insides like that, to care more about my aliveness than my fear of not being heard.
It was a subtle burst but somehow felt monumental. I sent a clear message not only to him and to myself but to all of existence.
Because this needing to blow is not solely about the relationship with my dude, it’s about my relationship with myself.
It’s about my relationship with life. How I choose to live.
I want to blow, shatter, crumble, scatter, fall, burst, and wobble stupidly home more often in general.
Soft and slow or hard and fast, to break fully.
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Much LOVE,
Danielle
Hi Danielle, how lovely to receive your reply! Thanks for taking the time to write back. Yes, I'd be happy to chew on this more with you anytime! I think we all need the sisterly support!
Danielle, I absolutely love what you wrote and I can 1000% relate. I'm now 52 and on this side of the metamorphosis you described, I can tell you that I do not in fact think it is a mid life "crisis." I think it is a Midlife Mutha Fuckin' Bad Ass Woman Right of Passage. I think the rage is a powerful inner statement that screams No More, Thank You for all the ways we've been socialized as women to put up and shut up, people please, care take to our detriment, play small and be nice. Enough is enough. We can be kind but we can be strong and mighty in that at the same time. We owe it to ourselves and the world needs our powerful authenticity. If you feel so inclined to chat more, I'm here for you Sister. I do not know how I ended up receiving your mailings, but I love them. You ROCK!