In the Twilight of an Era

              This past September, I was running on a beautiful Saturday morning with R, one of my best female ( and yipee, American! ) friends here. We wound through the market at Maubert-Mutualité, where we had stopped, tempted, by luscious grapes and canteloupe, to browse and buy. My head was spinning fresh from the drunken freedom of a post-nanny summer sort of freedom, if you can call what this is freedom. We were discussing our lives as we finally crossed the Seine from south to north, left bank to right bank, towards the Caféothèque where our group was meeting at the end, when she said something very profound that I have since come firmly to believe in:

               Our lives are not a unified entity but a series of lives strung together. 

               A set of different experiences and changing hopes, visions, and dreams that on any given whim or twist of events can change and push us in directions we could never predict.

              And little did I know this past September that I was standing on a swivel point.

*  *  * 

             If there is something of which I know I am truly guilty, it is of looking too far into the future, of trying to divinate what is coming, or in some way to construct it. To engineer my future so I can control my anxiety about it.

            This year has been a lesson in letting that go and giving myself over to the what's next? and not being afraid of it.

            It's been a tough, tough lesson.

           But now as I stand in the twilight of one era of my life, I cannot help but look back. And it seems the universe is throwing me back to loose ends, old guests, people I once knew. It is only natural, I suppose.

*  *  * 

            I was chatting with a very old, and very dear, friend of mine, another R. We've known each other since we were 13 and 14 respectively. She's in Texas now, doing fabulously. We were updating each other on one another's lives when it occurred to me to ask about Mr. SYS. 

           ¨How is he?¨ I asked, out of curiosity. 

           ¨ I haven't heard from him in a while, but last I did he asked me about your blog.¨

           I have two. This one, and it's slightly older, much more serious, artsy, writery companion that I started when I first came over here. SYS used to read it, and his family too, but when I cut him out of my life I cut his family out too. Hard core chopped them off, facebook and all. So it would shock me, unless he heard through word of mouth, that he reads and knows about this blog. But I wouldn't doubt he could find it either. I am not afraid of that. 

            Let's make one thing clear: I have no shame in what I write here. I would not be comfortable putting it on the internet if I did. I wish him nothing but the best; it was simply time to go our separate ways. 

             ¨ That's strange,¨ I said. 

             ¨I didn't give him the link,¨ R replied. ¨I just didn't respond.¨

              I responded that I didn't mind if he did: after all, he lived our story too. And I genuinely feel bad about cutting off his family, because I grew up with them...his parents watched me grow up too. I have nothing against them, but I cannot keep their son out of my life and keep them in. 

              I asked R if his parents knew what had happened between us, and she said no, but that they agreed that if that was what had to happen it did, but that they missed me anyway. I miss them too. And I miss the person I thought their son was. And I miss the person I thought he could be. 

              But I don't miss the pain and the agony, I don't miss the emotional heaviness of it all.

             Now it is nothing but a phantom memory that I look back upon every once in a while to remind me where I came from, and to remind myself not to go back there, or to ever become that version of myself again.

              I realized tonight that my main mistake with SYS, and with all the people I have dated, and even lots of people in my life in general, has been this: I am too quick to be too generous of myself and my time and my thoughtful gestures. I am not careful enough about who I dole out my generosity to, I give blindly and without discretion. With the men I date, it is because I want so badly to convince someone to stay, to choose me, to keep me that I have completely forgotten that they should have to convince me to want to keep them too. That they should have to work for me because I am worth it and I deserve it.

               I wasn't like that with SYS.

               Lesson learned. 

              I was in the twilight then too. 

*  *  * 

               I am truly in the twilight of an era. I gave my notice to nanny boss yesterday. I simply have to survive another three months. 

               The thought that in three months I will no longer ¨have kids¨ to occupy all my weekends, that I will be able to actually DATE like a normal person, actually GO OUT like a normal mid twenty-something, not be at someone's beck and call, decide what I do on my Saturday mornings, is so so so strange. And so profoundly liberating. 

               I am ready to move on. I am ready to change lives. 

               It is always sad to say goodbye to one life you have lived because it is always the death of something, the death of one relationship or one version of one's self, but like snake skin, must be shed. Dare I say it, it's almost like breaking up with someone. 

                I am breaking up with nannying. I am breaking up with all the remnants of American Lindsay. ( As my oldest girl kiddo put it,  I am not ¨American¨ but ¨ Ameropean ¨ ). I am breaking up with academia ( at least for now, we'll see ). 

                And it is all so scary and so liberating at once. 

               In the twilight and into the dark we go.