Meanderings of a Mid-Life Crisis

The fact of the matter is that everything is wrong and nothing is right. As melodramatic as it may seem, this the reality. Nothing is as it should be, all is out of place.

I used to wake early, the bathroom light on a timer alongside those in the office, where my phone alarmed. The bathroom remains as dim as I feel when I approach the thousands of versions of software I’m assumed to manage throughout any given day, a façade of ease shoved into the remote controls of our lives, rectangular restraints of modern life.

I no longer wake with anticipation for a social obligation of an early-morning workout class nor a buddy to exchange drawings with. I return to slumber, hopeful the world of dreams will offer me more than my solitude, expectations and exhaustion. As my rested eyes reopen hours later, my will is so narrow that I look over at my bookstand and prefer the escapism of another page rather than approaching another day.

My younger son comes to me, the tasks of the morning suddenly urgent as the clock ticks on.

We can’t find socks, the lunch box has yesterday’s remains, he wants pizza rolls for breakfast and breakfast foods packed into his lunch. I oblige. I ask him questions, to which he replies: “I’m not telling you” in his mocking tone, that which seems as if it should be accompanied by a “nyah nyah nyah,” a thumb on the nose and wiggled fingers protruding. As if he’s withholding and insulting at the same time, taunting me over a refusal of closeness between us. I remind him again that I don’t like when he says that in that tone of voice. He nods in agreement.

We glance at some of the assignments he brought home from school, one which represents kindness involving caring about how others feel. The illustration features a figure with a thought bubble encompassing the phrase: “I was mean to him.” I inquire if that happens to him sometimes.
“No.”
“You don’t realize after you’ve been mean to someone?”
“No.”
“But I just told you I thought it was mean to say ‘I’m not telling you’ like that.”
“Oh. Well, the difference is that it’s not H-I-M.”
I maintained patience as I smirked at his smart aleck reply, then ribbed: “So you’re just mean to girls all the time instead?” with confidence he would reply in the negative. Yet.
“Well, kind of. When the other boys are doing it.”
I approached the morality of his behavior, yet his response was simple: “What? I do it because I want to fit in with the boys.”
I reassure him that doing the right thing is better than fitting in, and I know its true because I’ve ended friendships for that same reason and left communities as well. It’s not long before we rush to meet the bus while his bagged snack remains shining upon the kitchen counter, far from the backpack in which it belongs.

I can’t find my shoes. The Christmas boxes are still strewn about the living room, not returned downstairs as my husband promised last night before returning to work at eight P.M.. My keys are missing, my water bottle. The latest painting glares at me. I’m proud of it, my alternative escape yet another unfinished task that beckons me.

My spare key in the car with me, I must listen to the radio instead of my usual. Drone strikes in…Thailand? Australia blanket banning social media for children under sixteen. Cut to an Aussie official’s voice: “I advise them to pick up their sport again. Or the book on the shelf that has been collecting dust. More importantly, to spend more time with their friends and their family.”

No parking at the gym. I reluctantly leave my car behind in a spot at the neighboring restaurant, one of the few without the posted threats from the gun store owner on the second floor.

The gym is wonderful. Full of fun, friends, kindness, compliments, acknowledgement, achievement.

Back home, I’d like to get dressed with haste. The bathroom trash is filled to the brim, my partner’s underwear on top. The pair is familiar, imbued with memories from a time when I frequented Target, each trip I would toss a pair of novelty boxer briefs in the cart alongside my purchases. This pair, red with a pattern of s’mores and the phrase “want s’more?” repeated was a favorite of mine. When he’d wear them it would incite me to to solicit him for intimacy.

Now, a decade and a half later, inside-out with the waistband wasted, I ask myself: “Do I want s’more?”

Our physical intimacy is vivacious, thrilling. Dizzying. I am devoted to him, in admiration of his intelligence. I appreciate the way our foundations of separate solitude shaped us into confident and competent people in fields that do not cross. Complementary, if you will.

Yet, can we see eye to eye about our future?

He’s still reaching, still achieving, while I flounder. Has he not done enough for our corporate overloards? Has he not earned enough money, respect, prestige in his field? Did he not, nine days ago, suffer a near-fatal health emergency, resulting in a multi-day hospital stay on the other side of the country, due to overwork? When will it be my turn to focus on my goals? When am I awarded with a wife that will see to odds and ends while I laser focus on the path I’m due to pursue? When will I have a partner stand back with unrelenting support, tending to the minutiae of everyday life, home, and child rearing, catching balls that I’ve dropped?

The days pass, the conversations repeat. I, like a pull-string doll, express my concerns, my yearns. He, with a pull string all his own, appeases, pleases, seeking my momentary comfort. Then, back to the same promises of a future that seems ever-more unlikely, where I am in the driver’s seat of our shared life.

I enter the shower stall of our dated bathroom, that which I was certain would be updated “soon” when we moved into this home nearly eight years ago. The curtain, cut to size, is curling at both its edges, no longer serving its task well. As I wash my hair, I glance again at the dust that sticks to the Hale Navy walls, that which I notice only and always when I am nude, with water falling down my breasts, dropping onto the shower floor near a swirled tangle of wet discarded hair near the drain.

These all are my unwritten responsibilities.

When I decided I wanted to focus more on my business, to take time to formulate a marketing plan, create work, and submit to galleries, residencies, festivals–that required time that I had to steal from minutiae, from comfort in everyday life. Yet no one is there to catch the balls dropped, so day after day I sink into more discomfort, overstimulated by unfinished tasks, reminded of the ways in which service people have failed, how my marital partnership is not where I want it, that I’ve been in this Beaver-Cleaver suburb for over a decade alone, without family support or Texan hospitality or consideration for others, even when paid handsomely to perform a task.

And for what? Not just “for what” regarding to live here, in this alien land, but for what regarding art as a career? Because my friends and family liked my paintings when I used to post on social media platforms? Because last year someone who came across my work on reddit commissioned me for thousands of dollars of work? Because I began to believe that if that could happen without marketing or trying at all, I might have a real chance? But will I ever have a God damn chance? Because I look around and baseline is more work than one woman can take on, nevertheless adding on top of that, becoming an entrepreneur! What in the unrealistic fuck?

Shower is over. My favorite bra is missing, my clothes are too tight. Dressing was fun when I was twelve pounds lighter, when I became dependent on my husband’s cooking. Nearly two years after he released himself of that duty, weight loss feels futile with my incapability to eat healthfully among the chaos of an overcrowded pantry with little more competence in the kitchen than when I was ten years old and tasked with preparing all of my own ultra-processed meals. I go to iron a wrinkled skirt, the fabric covering of the ironing board ill-fitting so I must always iron atop a wrinkled surface. I hold the elastic of the cover taut with my left hand while dragging the iron with my right. My playlist, created to keep me on task to be showered, dressed, and ready in 30 minutes, is on its final song, that which should be heard when I’m heading out the door. I am not heading out the door. I do not head out of the door nearly enough. This is my primary expressed frustration.

I put on the freshly ironed skirt. It is ill-fitting with the extra weight around my middle and I must wear something else. It is at this point that I come to the conclusion that nothing is right and everything is wrong. I will write this down in my journal, the same that has three dates scrawled with nothing between them, my last attempts to complete a task that was once a daily ritual for many years. An hour later, it is between these pages that I remain. Is this what has been missing? Journaling, this written release?

Yes, and.

Quite frankly, all has been missing.

What positive events have taken place in your life over the past year?

Daily Prompt #2145

Empty Nest Syndrome

It’s hard to believe or muster up the courage to type, but it has been a blessing that my oldest son has begun on his own path in Texas. I haven’t updated to mention since the last post about my personal life, but we’ve been back in contact for six weeks. We chat often, and facetime for hours until we have nothing left to say. I’m grateful to return to the closeness that our relationship possessed, looking forward to his visit for Christmas, and proud that he was able to start anew as a high school senior.

It’s a positive event because it allowed me to stay in the feeling of “this is not it” that has been tugging at me for years while I was too distracted by serving others. I’m grateful because I’ve realized that I’ve been spending the last four or so years indulging in hedonistic pleasures every chance I can to keep myself from drowning in lack of eudaimonia. Put simply, I was emphasizing feeling good in the moment–moment to crushing moment–to escape the acknowledgement that I was not living a purpose-driven life.

Or, perhaps, my oldest son was my purpose since I, at nineteen, became his parent. My son was my sun, my life-giver, my golden furnace when I had nothing but pain in my life, when I was still very much a child. I organized my life around him, then around my husband who vowed to support me in doing so. I kept building my life around these people and then there were more and I was no longer organizing my life around people but rather throwing things at the mix of overwhelm and on-my-own and damn-I-could-use-a-village.

I am grateful for his departure and for our temporary riff, so I could see past him and look at my life more critically.

Abandonment

Though I am back to a loving, laughter-filled relationship with my first born, my mother remains out of contact with me. It is on her own accord. In the midst of her anger, she gathered all of the photos she possessed of me–baby and all–placed them in the box her dog food was shipped in (alongside forgotten-about love letters from my jailed high school boyfriend) and mailed them, sans note or nod to an affinity for me. She did the same to my older sister, with whom she never had a direct confrontation. We’ve been disappeared metaphorically from her mentally-ill miasma.

I’m still talking positives here, I have not digressed. It has been her greatest gift to me that she has chosen to cut me out of her life, and so harshly. We did not have the foundation my son and I have. She neglected me throughout my childhood and my sister and I didn’t know her or see her as we grew up. We had not an affectionate mother, but rather an apathetic roommate that did our laundry and ate at work while we toiled at home with no food.

For nearly twenty years, I’ve been an adult trying to navigate a relationship with her while she consistently harmed me and would amp up the pain in times when I showed distress. I did the no-contact thing off and on, but I would always return to the belief that if I was more explicit in teaching how I wanted to be treated as a human being, we could have a relationship.

Rather, I have closure that we will not. I do not have to try anymore, I don’t have to keep her secrets of neglect and abuse anymore. I have been granted freedom.

Tugging

This year has been filled with pain. I would not dare say it’s the worst year of my life, as all of my worst years remain in childhood when I had no control over what would happen next, when I lacked safety, protection, and stability. This year has been full of heartbreak, loss, hard truths. But It has also been enriched with guidance. I reacquainted myself with Taoism and have let the spirit guide me. I feel my path is tugging me in the right directions. I have lost friendships that were valuable but loss made room for returning to enriching past relationships. In my heartbreak I have been ripped open to possibilities.

Tugging comes from art sales here and there, galleries, guidance from mentors, opportunities and possibilities. I used to feel hopeless often. Now I feel mad. On a walk this Sunday with a friend, I confessed that I’ve liked feeling angry lately. When she pressed me further I lacked the words, feeling shame for saying it and other things during the walk, frustrations with my marital life. But my anger means I’m aware. I’m not in a puddle of pity, considering whether or not I need to put myself out of my misery.

I’m awake, and I want to turn the page in my own book.