I’ve recently discovered what’s wrong with me. All of a sudden, my seemingly erratic emotions and actions of the past four years are completely understandable. From my sudden and fleeting fling with adult ballet lessons to my emotional outbursts, to my full-blown determination to return to college after an eighteen-year hiatus, I finally realize that I’m in the beginning stages of a mid-life crisis.
Impulsively, I want to ask everyone I know in my age group, “Are you going through a MLC, too?” but somehow, even though the print media is full of advice about how to handle this common occurrence, it’s not the kind of conversation starter that seems appropriate somehow, even among friends. For goodness sake, no adolescent goes around shouting “Eureka!” because they’ve discovered they’ve entered puberty. But for me, the discovery that I am not too young at the age of 39 to experience this universal phenomenon is freeing in a sense. At last, I have some explanation for my rants. What a relief to know I am not crazy! I’m absolutely normal!
So what could have set off my mid-life crisis so early, I wonder. Perhaps my near-death experience delivering my fourth child in the spring of 2003 had something to do with it. Facing one’s own mortality is never a slight thing and certainly forces one to reevaluate life and cherish every moment. Certainly, sixteen years as a stay-at-home mom with unfulfilled dreams has something to do with it. So does nearly losing my 61-year-old father last year to a ruptured brain aneurism and the realization that my oldest child will be leaving the nest in two short years.
As usual, whenever I need answers, I go to the public library. There, I can search among the stacks and find the divergent, thinking voices I crave to help me decide where to go from here. As I read, I indulge in the conversations I can’t seem to have with my husband, my friends, even myself. In the private sanctuary of my mind, I puzzle over these new-found, gut-wrenching, teeth-clenching sensations of my current reality knowing that the life boat of literacy and my ever buoyant life vest of wit will keep me afloat through this indeterminate period of uncertainty.
