Life's a long song

I was looking through some old pictures last night and feeling a little bit melancholy. It's really quite rare for me to feel that way, but it was a full moon, and I tend to get a little looney when the moon is full. I know it's weird, but it's true. I don't start ripping my clothes off and baying at the moon, but I do get irritable and short-tempered, and yes, a trifle weepy. It's like lunar PMS or something. Or actual PMS, but whatever.

Time is moving too quickly. My children are growing so fast that I don't feel like I am savoring it enough; I find myself wishing for bedtime when I should really be just enjoying spending time with these little guys whom I love so completely. I keep having moments when I imagine what it will be like when they're grown, or at least off at college, and I have all this free time to sit and drink wine and read my books and watch something other than SpongeBob and.... and GOD. It sounds fucking terrible! It sounds lonely! I'm having pre-emptive empty nest syndrome.

How to slow down time? How to enjoy every moment? How to be grateful enough?

I've never been one of those people for whom life is a given. I have always, even as a child, harbored a rather morbid part in my mind that goes to dark places pretty easily. If my mom was late from work, I'd sit in the window and cry, imagining her in a firey car accident. Nice, huh? My parents like to say I'm just the biggest worrier they've ever known, and that's partially true, but I think it's more like I just have no problem imagining the worst case scenerio for any given situation.

And here's where you're all gonna place me solidly into the "hippy-dippy metaphysical hoo-hah" category, but frankly I feel like I've been here before, and I think I've seen some crazy ass shit, and I think it makes it all the more easy to know that bad stuff happens to good people all the goddamn time. There is nothing in life that is a given, no guarantees. None. Everything wonderful can be wiped out in a heartbeat. Everything that irks you today, you will miss when it is gone.

I am so grateful for my life, which has felt charmed despite its hardships. I still have so much to learn, but feel like there's joy in that work. I just want to do right by everyone, including myself. When I am an old woman sitting alone in a quiet, empty house, I just want to feel like I've accomplished something worthwhile. I want to feel like I experienced life with all of its ugliness and beauty, and came out better for it in the end.