What Does Retirement Look Like for a Type A Persomality

I feel as if I jumped on a mental merry-go-round. I can't focus on one thought. Its the hurry hurries time 1000. Its as if something broke loose inside me. I keep thinking "Is this what true madness feels like?" A relentless whirling feeling? Well like dying I refuse to accept it. This is a question of determining what's keeping me up nights. I think I'm closing in on it. I don't know who retired Susan is. What does she do? What does she wear? From the simple to complex - all that I was was about the professional world, the business world, the world of achievement. These are the things that defined me. Being a fat black woman on a little red electric scooter is definitely NOT how I envisioned myself when I got older and lets not even talk about becoming disabled. I'm so disabled I got SSDI on my first try which I'm told is practically unheard in my category. So what does disabled retired Susan look like?

A thousand years ago my first step towards professionalism was shopping at Kmart. Yes I said Kmart. I was working nights at a psych center and having some very unpleasant things thrown at me. My clothes stunk so badly I usually thew them away after a few months. But I also wanted to dress a little better than the standard uniform when I went to my college class. Blue jeans and a nice blouse was a step up. The other day I found myself back in Kmart. I needed a new watch and my days of buying at Macy's are over. It was startling to find myself back where it all began and it felt like a major failure. When you work towards going up you never imagine you could go back down too. I'm reading a series of articles about who are you in the November Oprah (I just love that magazine) and the article is timely for me because that's my big question - who is retired Susan? What resonates about these articles is how many of the women they interviewed knew what they wanted to be when they grew up. For me there was absolutely no expectation that I would be anything when I grew up. Remember this was the 60's and MLK hadn't gone to the mountaintop yet. Little black girls were rarely encouraged to envision much more than a good cleaning job. My mother would often tell me I was too ugly to expect to marry so I needed a trade to support me. Consequently each summer I spent time with various women learning everything from plain sewing, to knitting, crocheting, tatting and finally quilting. The quilting remains with me even today. Yet through all those years the one thing that never left was an intense desire to write. I'd write about anything and on anything I could get my hands on. I can still hear my mother saying "You'd better not be writing about me girl." Of course I was usually writing about her.

Writing is why I originally went to college. I published in both literary reviews and published in a literary review called "Ploughshare" at the end of my senior year at Vassar. I turned away from my writing for the same reason most people turn away from their dreams - I had a family to support. Now the family has long since grown and gone, although I'm deeply grateful for how often they stay in touch. So I guess there's no time like the present to dust off my creaky writing skills. It's a very good sign that my college writing teacher is excited about having lunch with me. Winter maybe approaching but its starting to feel a bit like spring to me.