Living my dream, at 49

I am living my dream. Only, I had not known it was my dream until now. I am now 49 years old, and my life so far is mostly about other people’s dreams.

Up until now, I was a carrier of expectations, responsibilities, and aspirations that were never truly mine. I wore the roles given to me with a sense of duty, grit, and determination, convincing myself they were meaningful because they mattered to others. I fulfilled my father’s dream, only for him to forget that it was his.

I fulfilled another father’s dream by helping his son to get a PhD, when everybody had already given up hope. It did not bring me peace. I worked extra hard for the University, only for it to sack me at the first opportunity. In carrying their dreams, I forgot to dream for myself.

Now, at 49, jobless, doing odd jobs here and there, albeit well-paid, there is a strange feeling of being unchained. I find myself, for the first time, doing something for me. I neglected the cooking of family meals: we used to eat pizza only once a week, the rest were always freshly cooked. That week, we ate pizza twice!

I used the freed time to explore myself. I wrote stories after stories after stories. First, they were my own stories, then my parents’, my wife’s, my family’s. Then other stories, about others’ lives, then about life itself: how I saw things, how I am seeing things, how I want to see things. These stories came together, like they were there, meant to be written. I felt joy, real joy. I felt I wanted to get up in the morning. I felt scared of checking my emails: if work came my way, who would write these stories? I wrote, and tears rolled down my face, and my son gently comforted me with his touch. I had to explain to him: these were tears of joy, of emotions unbottled.

Then I run. I run hard, I run at the top of my heart rate, I run uphill for a long time. Even my smartwatch says I am an elite runner for my age, but I know better than to believe these embellishments. It feels like something inside me is boiling, and the steam needs to get out, and I am letting the steam out. The steam has been bubbling up for a very long time, wanting an out. Now, I have found two outlets, one mental, one physical. It feels reckless, but it also feels good. It feels like a new me, a real me, one that is very capable, that lives very healthily, that empathises with others and life (see my other stories).

Of course, depression and anxiety are still there, creeping up unnoticed, but at least I feel in better control. I don’t know how long it will last. It has lasted a month already; I hope it will last for another year. I have been running hard since the pandemic (five years ago), and thus am unlikely to stop anytime soon. I have been writing for more than a month, and still feel that I have more stories to tell. So writing will last me some more.

Then I will need to think about another outlet: videography? Choreography? Sugar baby? (Just kidding. My friends, who did have sugar babies, advised me otherwise.)

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