Do you trust yourself? Really trust yourself and your thoughts and intuitions? I thought I did. I sure did when I was young. I knew everything about myself, and everything else for that matter!

After I became single at sixty, I was able to step back and look at my adult life and see where I went wrong, how my marriage had changed me, figure out what made me make some really bad decisions, and how I got where I am today. You know, the rundown of my life that goes around and around in my head at night when I can’t sleep. Please tell me I’m not the only one!

Last night was no exception: I tossed and turned for hours, ruminating about a couple of areas of my life. While I turn over from my right side to my left I am saying to myself, “What is wrong with you? What are you so worried about ALL THE TIME?”

And, here it is: I don’t trust myself. Crazy but true. I don’t trust myself after years of making terrible life choices, I just feel I can’t depend on myself. I hate it, but it’s true. Where did that come from, for the girl who thought she had the world by the tail once upon a time? The following seem to be common themes in my worried world:

Lack of Time

Time, or the lack of it, seems to hang over my head always. I feel a fear that I just don’t have enough time to still make some of my dreams come true. But, there is very little rationality to that thinking. Yes, I am not young and my new biological clock is ticking (the one that is counting down the total days, not the baby-making ones). Guess what? It was always ticking, it was just much less likely that it would stop when I was young! I now feel this nagging urgency that I have written about several times. The urgency feels so strong that I have butterflies in my stomach when I wake up. But, is it worth losing sleep over?

I have no illnesses that I know of, I am in fairly good shape and there is no reason for me to fear that the end is near, but I do and I want to stop right now! I would much rather lose sleep over something I can control, or over something that is actually real!

Lack of Funds

I can’t be alone in worrying about money in my mid-sixties, but that doesn’t make it any better. I think I have enough, and I am not retired by any means, but that constant fear about money haunts me night and day. I put money away every month like a good girl, I watch my spending, all the things that I am supposed to do but it still doesn’t make me feel calm and secure. Even my financial advisor told me to lighten up (not her exact words).

I have always had confidence in myself and my ability to earn a living, and it’s not that I have changed my mind on that, but I do feel like I can’t see a clear path to living the life that I want to live. Someone tell me the direction I should go and I’ll just do it (maybe that’s the problem)!

Love

This is a big one for me. I am finding that I don’t quite trust myself when it comes to picking a partner (as if I have a swarm of men at my door and I just need to point to one). Clearly, I didn’t make a great decision when I picked the man I was going to marry and spend the rest of my life with. And my relationship after that had a sad ending. What now? Don’t know, but I can tell you I don’t sleep at all when I have met someone who I kind of like and who likes me because it activates the worry wagon in my head. I put a lot of pressure when it comes to matters of the heart and I’m not sure that’s necessary. Rats!

I do know that every woman I know that I talk with in my age group feels unsettled. It is an unsettling age, for sure, and I had no idea that it would be. But I want to find a way to reduce the anguish in my brain at night and enjoy all of the great things in my life, while I have them. Maybe that’s the angst.

Do my Starting Over at Sixty Sisters have the same feelings? Any ideas for a more calm, settled Paula?