Living in an Alternate Universe
A friend of mine called last week to tell me she and her husband had finally listed the house.
Four bedrooms, a yard he’d babied for thirty years, gone in a weekend to the first offer. They’re moving into a two-bedroom apartment with a balcony “just big enough for two chairs,” she said, and she sounded relieved in a way that surprised me. Lighter. Like she’d been carrying something heavy so long she’d forgotten it had weight.
“We’re done accumulating,” she told me. “We just want to watch things now instead of managing them.”
I understood exactly what she meant. After decades of tending a house, caring for a yard, storing belongings, and maintaining everything that had gathered around their lives, she was ready to be released from it. She did not sound sad. She sounded relieved.
But after we hung up, I kept thinking about that sentence.
We’re done accumulating.
At first, I thought that was where my friend and I parted ways, because I am not done accumulating at all. My apartment is filling with canvases, paint, unfinished ideas, and evidence of a life that still feels very much in motion. I do not want a smaller life. I want more room for the life I am finally allowing myself to live.
Then I realized I may have misunderstood what she was doing.
Perhaps she is not making her life smaller. Perhaps she is clearing away everything that belongs to a life she has already finished living. Once the rooms are emptied, the yard belongs to someone else, and the accumulated weight of decades has been removed, what can finally arrive?
That is the question, isn’t it?
What becomes possible when a woman is no longer spending her time preserving everything she once needed, once valued, or once believed she was supposed to keep? Who might she become when her surroundings no longer constantly remind her of every role she has played and every obligation she has carried?
Her freedom may come through emptying. Mine may come through filling my home with paint, work, beauty, and whatever new idea has just barged through the door. But perhaps we are doing the same thing. We are both making room for a life that could not fully arrive while the old one was still taking up all the space.
She is clearing hers by letting go.
I am clearing mine by refusing to deny myself any longer.
And both of us may be standing at the entrance to an entirely new life.
I am not done accumulating.
This may be one of the great surprises of growing older. We do not all want the same freedom.
Some women want fewer rooms, fewer obligations, fewer things asking to be managed. They want a small balcony, two comfortable chairs, and a life that can be locked behind one door.
I understand the appeal. Truly, I do.
But my version of freedom currently has paint on the floor.
I am accumulating canvases. Ideas. Half-written essays. Tubes of paint. New desires. New ways of seeing myself. I am accumulating evidence that my life is not finished expanding simply because the calendar says I am seventy.
I said that sounded wonderful, and I meant it. I also hung up the phone and sat there for a minute wondering what was wrong with me, because the thought of watching anything from a folding chair made my skin itch.
This was not really about which of us had more energy. It was about what we wanted our energy for.
She wanted to stop maintaining a life that no longer suited her. I wanted enough room to keep creating the life that does.
That’s when I noticed the pattern. Not just her — half the people I grew up with are doing some version of the same thing. Selling the house, shedding the belongings, settling in to observe the rest of it from a comfortable distance. And there’s nothing wrong with that. If a smaller life and a quieter view brings someone peace, that is exactly what they should be doing.
But over here, I’m doing the opposite, and it feels less like a choice than a compulsion. I’m learning platforms I don’t understand at an hour of the morning I used to reserve for coffee and silence. I write daily now, which is its own kind of stubbornness. And the painting hasn’t slowed down even slightly — if anything, it’s the one thing getting louder as everything else gets quieter.
I’ve been turning over what actually accounts for the difference, and the honest answer isn’t ambition. It’s my body.
I wake up most mornings and there’s energy in my limbs before I’ve even decided to use it. My mind is clear in a way I don’t take for granted, not after watching people I love lose that clarity years before their bodies gave out. That’s a gift with an expiration date nobody gets to see in advance, and I am not interested in spending it in a folding chair, however comfortable the balcony.
If you’ve ever felt out of step with the people around you at this age, I don’t think that’s a warning sign. I think it might be the surest evidence you’re actually living your own life instead of the one that was handed to you along with your birth year.
My friend’s balcony really does sound lovely. I hope she loves those two chairs.
Perhaps this is what freedom after seventy actually looks like. Not all of us marching toward the same approved version of simplicity, but finally becoming honest about what makes us feel alive.
Her new balcony will hold two chairs, and I sincerely hope she spends many peaceful mornings in one of them.
As for me, I need walls for paintings, tables for unfinished ideas, and enough space to leave something in progress overnight.
She is making room in her life by letting things go.
I am making room in mine for everything still trying to arrive,still making a mess of things on purpose.
An interesting thought to ponder: If you knew with absolute certainty that your dream was already a fact, how would you breathe, walk, and speak differently in this very hour?
A BRIEF STUDIO NOTE
I’ve started a new painting- a commission. I’ll be showing progress in notes on Substack. Have you scrolled the notes feed on Substgack, yet? Give it a go, there are some nifty writers posting notes that you may find clever, useful and profound.
Also If you’d like to discuss a commission for a Christmas or Holiday present
NOW is the time. Sooner the better, as it does take time for an oil painting to “ cure” before it can be shipped. Process takes about two months. I have opening for one or two small commissions.
PS - If something in this story stayed with you — if you felt the recognition before you felt the words for it — I want you to know there’s a place for that.
I’ve been quietly building something called the BREAKTHROUHG. It’s a small group of women who are done waiting for their life to feel like theirs again. Not a support group. Not a place to process pain, though we understand it. A place to think out loud with women who have lived enough to know what they’re talking about — and who want peers, not cheerleaders.
We share what’s true. We ask the real questions. We hold each other to the version of ourselves we’re trying to grow into, not the version we’ve been performing.
If you’re just beginning to understand that you’re allowed to want what you want — that’s exactly the right moment to come in.
You don’t need to have it figured out. You just need to be done pretending you don’t care.
Come see if it feels like home.
I can appreciate the line, “We just want to watch things now instead of managing them.”