Midlife crisis

You know that feeling when you're entering into a maze and all of the possibilities are equally good? You are well hydrated and well fed - because you are at a maze, which means you are probably on vacation; so you've recently had the most fantastic strawberry punch and eaten the most delicious piece of cheesecake – because you are allowed cheesecake on vacation – in fact, cheesecake is considered an essential food group when you are traveling anywhere. Anyway, you are well hydrated and full from your, delicious perfectly made, New York cheesecake. (You may or may not be in New York but most vacation spots have a New York cheesecake - stay with me.) You jump into the maze, not caring whether you go left or right, running around each curve, squealing when you hit a dead end and then skipping while retracing your steps. This is what it’s like for a good portion of your early adult life. Things are open, choices are made, and failures overcome. Possibility.

Then there's the point in the maze experience when you start to wonder if you will make it out alive. That maybe you have been lured here by a serial killer or that you are the dumbest person alive and you'll have to be airlifted from the entertainment structure by a rescue helicopter and you're the only person in the 100 year history of the maze that has ever had to be rescued from it. You start to wonder if you will ever be able to eat cheesecake again or if you will have to find a way to live off of the bushes that line the path. You think you've passed that same rock fifteen times now; and perhaps the people running the maze have gone home; and they have closed the entrance/exit and it looks like just another wall now – and you have actually found your way out but it's locked. Sometimes you sit down and pout. Sometimes you want to scream for help but you are too embarrassed. But most of the time you just keep running and rounding corners because that's what you have to do. This is what this portion of my adult life feels like. Decisions feel so final and failures seem unrecoverable.

Apparently my feelings are quite common and can be diagnosed as a Midlife crisis.

I wasn’t aware I was having one until I received an email telling me I was. I should have seen it coming because my email has been sending me things like: the five unknown signs of pancreatic cancer and You are probably only days away from death – you just didn’t know. And I know that it knows things about me. I hate that it knows and I don't know how it knows - but it knows. So, when my email has this sort of tone, it really shouldn’t have surprised me that they decided I was unaware I was having a midlife crisis and sent me a list of signs so I could recognize them.
Here are the signs:

1) When you start panicking about health issues - check

·         This was already true because the emails had started making me panic.

·         Plus I am already sick so I was already paranoid ever since I was 18.

2) When you start having more questions than answers, like ‘Is this all there is?’ and ‘What am I doing here?’

·         I can’t say that the first question stood out because I feel like I can’t keep up with “all there is”. There's a chance I have asked, "Can there be less?" I don't think that's what they meant though. 

·         I have been asking myself: “What am I doing here?” a lot. For instance: Wondering why I have my daughter and three children of unknown parentage buckled into my car for a road trip; trying to explain to them why I have to change the song because the music is sexist - they don't care because of the beat yet I keep trying to explain as my daughter sinks further into the passenger seat. Or when I find myself in an awkward silence with one of Amelia’s teachers – the conversation is finished and yet I'm still standing there staring - not sure where to go next; so I keep standing there and so does he. So now we are just two people, standing outside next to each other, staring off into the horizon with the heat and the heavy weight of silence making us sweat. Or when I decide to suddenly stop at an open home for a dilapidated house filled with creepy-clown wallpaper that's being sold for half a million dollars. Realizing that we are the proletariat who will never be able to afford an expensive, terrible, clown-haunted house, unless there's corruption and banks give out loans like candy again. But then I realize I don't want to spend half a million dollars even if the house wasn't haunted by clowns. But I also don't want to keep funding my Landlord's yearly three-month-long European luxury tour.  So then I consider living in a portable pod on our friend's lawn. 

3) When you start comparing yourself to younger co-workers and feeling regret

·         I can’t say this is an issue except today, one of my younger co-workers said my outfit was a "throwback to the nineties". I still didn’t really regret it, though, because the outfit had been sitting on my table, clean, for a few days. So, not only did I not have to put it away but I also got dressed in less than two minutes because I didn’t have to decide what to wear.

4) A crisis seems to come from exhaustion and the sudden acknowledgment of the passage of time.

·         This is real. This happens every time I go to the gym; I'm exhausted and then I'm stunned that the "passage of time" has been two minutes.

·         Also, this happens to me every morning when it takes me a while to remember what day it is and I can’t open my eyes to check. And then when I do get up I want to go back to bed an hour later. And I can fall mouth-open-drooling-asleep in the car at any soccer practice.

·         So I guess this one gets the big tick because this happens to me every day?

5) A sudden urge to lose weight

·         This isn’t true because it has never been sudden – it is a constant wish. In fact, I was just yelling at the guy at my gym that, his gym was broken. I am running and ellipticalling (see my dictionary for the definition) my way through the “passage of time” yet my weight remains the same. He asked me what I’m eating and I yelled at him saying, “I refuse to go on a diet! Because diets make me sad and there are too many sad things in the world. I only eat delicious food. If it's not good for me, I only have a little so sometimes I only eat a quarter of a sandwich. Also this happens quite a bit because there's always that chance that there will be chocolate cake soon and, if I had eaten already, I couldn’t have the chocolate cake. So I usually try not to eat very much in case there's cake or cookies or something.” And he said, “hmmm, can you think of food as fuel rather than delicious?” and I said, "sure" but with a little too much teenage angst and sarcasm and walked away to do hours of running – I ate brownies for dessert - my weight remains the same.

The rest of the signs/symptoms did not apply because they were about “sexying up” and having affairs.  And, as I have already said, I get excited when I can just throw on my nineties outfit and get one more day out of my dirty hair; and I'm way too tired to even go to the movies with my friend - who I always want to see and I always want to go to the movies with - so I definitely do not want to balance, like a pelican, on a bar stool - drinking drinks that I would not be able to "think of as fuel” - not getting hit on because I look like a hip grandma in my capri pants - and I have  recently developed a permanent scowl because I no longer tolerate stupid conversation  – and I currently assume every conversation with a stranger will end up being stupid. It's a new theory because I used to be nicer. This wasn't listed as a symptom but I think it must be. But I don't have time to test my theory because of "all there is" to life.

So I’m not sure what to think. It wasn’t really a score thing like, you have to say yes to more than five in order to be in crisis. So maybe I am just a tired, middle-aged woman who hates to shop? Or maybe its because I just had a birthday and I couldn't remember how old I was turning? But as a bright spot, I called my parents today and Dad had decided to give Facebook a try and said, "I think this Facebook thing is going to be really great!" So at least I am winning at Facebook?

Either way, the symptom checker didn't help. I still feel like I'm lost in a maze and now it's sort of a horror maze; like from those Young Adult books (that I read and REALLY enjoy so I can't be that old) but instead of the creepy robot-bugs that eat you - I have little things dressed as cancer jumping out around one corner, followed by scary clowns around the next, interspersed with real-estate agents holding clip boards and assessing my dirty hair poking out in all directions, with judgey eyes and pursed lips that say, "welcome," but really mean, "you have no business here, do you." So who knows, maybe the exit is just around the next corner or maybe my next blog will be written from a one-room pod plugged into my friends house. Watch this space!