Reading, Writing, Ranting, Recommending: Torschlusspanik

August 21, 2024

“This could be the turning point of my life. If I lived to be ninety I was halfway through. Or if you thought of it as two lives, then I was at the very start of my second life.” — Miranda July, All Fours

There’s a lot of lore around aging, and specifically, around turning 40. I turned 40 last April, and I spent most of my 39th year being anxious about it. How would I feel? What would happen? I remembered all of my past selves feeling like 40 was basically death: you were a full-on adult who only cared about the stock market and coupons. Your music was old. You’d never be cool again.

Lucky for me, I have never one time been cool on purpose, and I was not remotely cool as a young person (when your primary interests are your clarinet, Jesus, and being a teacher’s pet, it’s not exactly a ticket to the popular crowd, you know?) so that wasn’t a big loss. But even luckier, I have always managed to have friends who were a bit older than me (or “I’ll Go First” Friends) who have ushered me into new eras of my life, and when it came to my 40s, they let me in on the not-so-secret secret: your 40s whip ass.

Friends had described turning 40 as an almost transcendent experience, where every last fuck you have to give disappears from your body, and you feel free. They were not wrong. I still get annoyed and crabby about things, but I can mostly roll my eyes at drama and people’s immature behavior. I genuinely believe the cliché phrases like “people’s behavior usually has more to do with them than with you” because it’s almost always true. When I hear that ankle socks are out of fashion or that we are supposed to embrace the JNCO-adjacent baggy jeans, I can remind myself that I’m now 41 years old, and that has absolutely nothing to do with me. In fact, most things that I am not directly responsible for have very little to do with me, and I can wish people the best (in the worst way — a Chappell Roan reference, see, I AM COOL!) and move on about my day. Some of that is being in my 40s, and some of that is because my therapist is a very patient magician.

I still panic and have moments where I wish I could change nearly everything about myself; however, for the most part, I can look at who I am and who I have been and feel deep compassion for the person I was and the choices I made — even the less-ideal ones. I look at that young woman and think, wow, she was doing her best, with a lot of pain and few tools. I want to hug her and give her a sneak preview of what life is like at 41, with a career, a wife, a good relationship with my parents, friends I adore, and the calm stability I craved but didn’t know how to create.

I feel like this in nearly every area of my life, save for one: writing and creativity. By 41, I feel like I should have published several books. I feel like I shouldn’t be applying to writing programs because I would be teaching at them in my fantasy life. I see people in their late 20s who are professors at prestigious programs and publishing their third and fourth books, and sometimes, I feel like I have missed the boat. I don’t want to be the 50-year-old at AWP toting my self-published novels around, not because there’s anything wrong with it, but because that’s never been my dream.

I’m currently reading Elisa Gabbert’s essay collection, Any Person Is The Only Self, and in one of the essays, she writes that Germans use the word Torschlusspanik instead of what most of us would call a mid-life crisis. It’s one of those “untranslatable words” that doesn’t have an equivalent in English, but means something like “shut-door panic” or “being on the wrong side of a closing gate.” It is the fear that one is missing out on opportunities for career, marriage, etc. — things that typically happen during the earlier part of life. I feel that fear so acutely: that gates are closing, that doors are slamming.

Right now, I’m coming to terms with the idea that I wasn’t putting energy into my writing or creativity for a lot of my earlier life. I’ve been writing since I was a kid, but I was also in college, working full-time, becoming a teacher, surviving my first years as an educator (something that leaves you with absolutely nothing to give), and healing from some pretty rough trauma. I wrote a blog for years (shout out to my loyal Just A Titch readers, the OGs) and have journaled for most of my life, but I also was busy joining a yoga cult and trying to make my body smaller and convincing myself I was straight and a billion other things.

When I read the quote from Miranda July’s All Fours this summer, it stopped me in my tracks. I don’t know if I will live until I am 90. I know it’s morbid and macabre, but with my particular brand of depression and suicidal ideation, I didn’t honestly plan to live to be 30. 41 feels like a miracle. But I love the idea of this being the start of a second life and knowing that I am much more in control of this one. I know that in this second half, I want to bet on myself and my creativity. I want to put my resources and energy into that, and not into other things that sap my energy. I have had Daisy Buchanan’s piece “What Will You Give Up To Write?” as an open tab since she posted it, and when I opened Instagram last week, this was the first thing I saw:

When I think about my “second life” I don’t want to look back on it and think that I wish I’d put more energy into writing. I want to look back and think, damn, I oriented my life around my creativity and my writing practice instead of signing up for every committee at work and counting calories and joining a million workout classes and watching reruns of The Office, and look what I have to show for it.

Before I go, as usual, the content that was the namesake of the newsletter:

Reading

I’m a Maggie Nelson fan because of her incredible work like The Argonauts and Bluets but The Red Parts is a researched memoir that tells the story of Maggie’s aunt, Jane Mixer, who was murdered and whose case was unsolved for nearly 40 years before a DNA match allowed them to find and try her killer. It’s an absorbing read, very different from Nelson’s previous work, and she is a genius, the end.

Writing

I am working on my novel for my MFA work this semester, and I’m somehow nearly up to 50 pages. It’s been really fun to work on, and somehow far less torturous than writing creative nonfiction, perhaps because I am sick of my own brain and stories. I also finally caved to the Save The Cat craze and bought Save The Cat Writes A Novel to help me figure out structure a little more clearly, because your girl loves to ramble.

Ranting

They need to make a throat that doesn’t hurt during the first week of teaching. I didn’t realize how little I talk during the summer (although I am sure my wife would beg to differ) until I come back to work and by the end of the day I am RASPING and in AGONY.

Recommending

That someone buy me this necklace. I’m fully kidding, I could never feel okay wearing a $300 necklace out of my home (especially one that appears to be just beads?!) but I am lusting after this one and the Clare V Grande Fanny. I own zero designer items as I am a PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHER married to a civil servant but a girl can dream.

Alas, my true recommendation for the week is ThisWorks Deep Pillow Spray. If you can’t sleep, this stuff is IT. I have a robust sleep hygiene regimen and a Klonopin prescription for the nights when my anxiety truly won’t leave me alone, and this, plus two capsule of magnesium has me out like a light and sleeping THROUGH THE NIGHT, which is something I’m pretty sure I’ve never, ever done (yes, I was a delightful baby and child to raise).