i feel like a total cliché typing this out at 2am after a glass of wine or two maybe three but whatever i dont really care anymore i hit 58 last month and my youngest just left for boarding school and it's like someone just pulled the plug on my entire operating system you know for thirty years it was GO GO GO always the next promotion the next big deal the next crisis to manage and i LOVED it i truly did it was all i ever wanted to do since i was a kid watching my dad work his butt off and i did it i got to the top i ran departments i had people reporting to me who were sharper than i was at their age and i had two amazing kids and a husband who mostly understood that i was not going to be the kind of wife who made dinner every night or whatever it was supposed to be and i thought this was my life this was what i was built for but now they're all gone like literally just gone the kids off to school the husband mostly playing golf and me just sitting here in this huge house that feels empty for the first time ever and i have no idea what to do with myself the meetings are just boring now the power plays feel silly i just dont have the fight in me anymore for it all and i keep thinking about all those mornings i got up before dawn and all the dinners i missed and all the times i just picked up the phone instead of sitting on the floor playing with them and i feel this massive regret like a physical thing in my chest like maybe i got it all wrong maybe i chased the wrong thing for so long and now its too late to do anything about it and im just sitting here waiting for menopause to finish making me insane and watching my body get weird without my permission and sometimes i think i just want to walk away from it all and never look back but then what do i do who even am i without the title and the meetings and the constant striving what a mess