My Midlife Crisis - II

Have you ever felt like life is giving you the finger?  I have felt that way at times and I'm pretty sure that everyone else has as well.  I don't know if my coping skills have totally gone out the window or what, but I have felt that life is completely screwing with me lately.

I don't recall the last time I was asleep before 2:00 am without being medicated.  Even easy tasks require monumental effort and I find myself unable to perform all but the most simple jobs.  Since feeling so crushed, I don't even recognize myself anymore.  I'm having trouble remembering the last time that I haven't felt overwhelmed by life.  I know I felt differently at one point, I must have, but I don't know when that may have been.

I've been pondering something that I said a week or so ago.  I've actually been tormented by it.  I said, "I used to be somebody.  Who am I now?"  I only meant to say the last line, but the first slipped out before I could pull it back and stuff it back down to that deep, dark place I don't want to acknowledge.

Now that I've verbalized something that shouldn't have seen the light of day, I've been thinking of it nonstop.  Isn't that what's really bothering me?  I miss who I was and I don't particularly like who I am now. 

I used to be important, at least I felt I was, and now I'm what?  A mom?  A wife?  That's it?  Yes, that's really it.

Who was I?  Why do I miss who I was?  Because I was someone who could handle anything!  I took on life's curve balls and knocked those bitches right out of the park.  Like a cat, I always landed on my feet; I may have landed hard and it may have hurt, but I didn't stay down and I kept moving forward.  I knew that I was one of life's winners.  I believed that I could make anything happen by my own determination to make the magic.  I think that who I was wouldn't have much patience with who I am now.

I was listening to Joni Mitchell's haunting River and I can sure identify with the desire to skate away.  I'm sure it's just the perfect storm of my midlife crisis, the exceptionally painful losses suffered within the last twelve months, and the incredibly overwhelming pain in my ass (and to my wallet) that my condo has been since November, but I am exhausted with it all.  Just completely and totally spent.

If I weren't a responsible wife and mother, I'd be sorely tempted to shake off the dust off and move on without a glance backward.  I won't, of course, because I am who I am - a responsible wife and mother.  I'm a lot of things these days, but I'm not a quitter and I certainly wouldn't abandon my family.  Oh, but I remember having the freedom to skate away on a river so long. . .