Mid Life Crisis
“I can’t believe he’s fifty years old and he’s driving around in a new Mustang!”, my sister said. We laughed as we watched the middle-aged man wave and smile as he slowly drove by showing off his new set of wheels. I was twenty years old at the time and couldn’t imagine why a middle-aged person would want to act like a teenager. It was absurd! I had heard the term “mid life crisis” but I never really truly knew what it meant…..until it happened to me--thus prompting me to do some soul searching into the symptoms of mid life crisis. Of course, the urge to purchase sporty vehicles, younger looking clothes, changing your appearance in an effort to look younger are symptoms of mid life crisis. However, I would like to outline the issues that I am currently experiencing which pertain to my children getting older, my aging parents, and my uncertainty with “what I would like to be when I grow up.”
My parents are seven years apart and were married when they were in their twenties. My dad was in the Marines and when he got out he went to work in the woods and bought a pulp truck. My mom couldn’t drive when my father met her; so he taught her how to drive after they got married. They seem to “offset” one another. Dad doesn’t say too much; whereas, my mother never runs out of things to talk about. Dad is seventy-three and still hauls wood almost every day and mom is sixty-six and keeps the cleanest house around. I have noticed small physical changes through the years with both of my parents but like most children—I have always been able to “overlook” it until the past couple of years. My mother has developed spinal stenosis and requires painful injections in her back with little to no relief. Her hair has gone from brown to gray and her finger joints have developed arthritic changes. She can still do housework and go places but she needs to take Vicodin to get through the pain. My father used to be a rugged two hundred twenty pound man but over the past few years he’s developed type II diabetes and recently started insulin therapy. He’s lost at least fifty pounds over the past year and is very thin. A lot of people ask me if he’s every going to “retire”….or they’ll ask me if he’s “ok” due to his weight loss. I am struggling psychologically with the idea of the two of them getting older and cannot imagine my life without them. Realistically speaking, I know that the time will come when I’ll have to face the inevitable but for now I guess I get mad at myself for recognizing their “aging process”. I can’t bury my head in the sand anymore. The books say that my emotions are emotions that are often seen when you go through mid-life crisis. I have to wonder….is this mid-life crisis or just plain common sense?
I couldn’t wait to have children when I got married. My husband and I knew that we wanted children and were in fact trying to conceive shortly before my wedding. We were blessed with a son; who is now twelve, and a daughter; who is eleven. I worked for a physician for twelve years prior to having my children. It was never uncommon to work a twelve hour day five days a week. That was the only life that I knew—and was the only thing that I was passionate about. My career began even before I met my husband. However, I remember sitting on the couch crying because I didn’t want to go and leave my son in daycare to return to work. What was wrong with me? Why would I want to throw my career away to stay at home with my kids? It didn’t matter…what mattered the most to me at that time was the fact that I was their mother and I didn’t want someone else raising my children. My husband works at least sixty hours a week and works at least one hour away from home; so I needed to ensure that I would be around to take care of them. I took another job working in our local school district and now have the same hours that my kids have with summers off. My job has no stress, is boring—but it’s worth hanging onto right now because of the hours….because of the kids. My son will have his license four years from now….they’ll be looking at colleges seven years from now….it seems like yesterday when they were toddling around and I can foresee that the next seven years will fly; as well. I can see my life at a standstill when they leave for college. The book says that the “empty nest syndrome” is all a part of mid-life crisis…. but I cannot imagine a parent not missing their child when they leave home. (Please keep in mind that I have not experienced the teenage years yet…so hold that thought!)
My final symptoms of mid-life crisis has been happening to me for over the past five years. I’m not sure what I want to be when my kids are grown and gone. I certainly could stay at home and clean and cook, garden, take long walks, fish, shop, spend time with my husband should he decide to retire from his construction business—or I could go on to college and reenter the work force for another fifteen years. I certainly know that I don’t want to work in the health clinic at school forever putting on band aids, etc. I have always had a medical background; therefore, I’ve been contemplating going on to nursing school. I should have done this five years ago but my kids were still pretty small and I couldn’t be away from them for that length of time. I have taken five college courses through the past few years—to include college composition. I keep thinking that I could quit my job this year and go to school full time; but then I worry about my parents health and tell myself that this isn’t a good idea. So, for now, I’m just dabbling around with some general electives—not even sure if I would even want to be a nurse. The book says that not being able to make a career decision or wanting to switch careers is a part of mid-life crisis.
Symptoms of midlife crisis can be broken down into different subcategories, but I chose to reflect on the above three that relate to my current situation. I believe that everyone goes through a lot of the symptoms of mid life crisis at one point in their life. In closing, I do realize that it’s normal to worry about aging parents, watching your children grow up and dreading the day when they spread their wings and fly, and exploring new career opportunities. What kind of a world would we be living in if noone worried or never set longterm goals?
So much of what I read exists only because I assign it--it has no purpose beyond fulfilling my assignment, and one has the sense so often that it is meaningless to the writer, pointless, not an expression of thought or feeling, not an exploration of ideas or problems, not an investigation into one's life or its difficulties. The writing is plodding and the piece is a chore to write and certainly a chore to read....
ReplyDeleteNone of that is the case here, not even a little bit. This made my morning.