Unfortunately the nice start to my day was marred by seeing my ex out walking on the drive home. :-( This time there was no mistaking who it was, as he was wearing a certain odd shirt that had originally caused my then-best-friend and I to give him a certain affectionate nickname. The other times I've seen him didn't bother me much, but this time I felt seriously sick to my stomach, panicky, then depressed -- probably because of the memories associated with that shirt.
I admit, sitting here with all of these medical appointments piling up, feeling physically ill from the infections, worrying about what to do about my education or the next year of my life in general, and then seeing my ex on top of it makes me wonder whether things will ever improve. Everybody else has been slowly moving on to better things in one way or another except me, and whatever improvement I manage to make is only after a lot of effort.
I barely achieved my BA, while my agemates are 1 - 2 degrees ahead or at least have a decent "real" job, with a living wage. I've had two relationships, the first consistent with a junior-high romance, the second closer to a first-semester college freshman. My agemates have by now lost track of how many partners (in both senses of the word), how many "serious" relationships; some have married, raised children, divorced, own houses... Everybody else my age is an adult, and everything associated with the term doesn't apply to me.
Yet everybody around me seems to think that I should be trying to arrange my life so it looks like I am an adult. Play at getting a job for the short period until my body or brain betray their developmental age; pretend to have a relationship and hide the blatant signs that my brain isn't ready. Ignore the pressure/pain of people's reactions whenever they happen to notice my facade slipping...
Others say that adulthood is all just pretending, and yes, to a large degree I can see that is true, but it isn't the kind of "pretending" I have been trying to do since my ex started mangling my life. My "pretending" goes so deep as to include consciously emulating most of the abilities discussed on this page. Some I do have naturally, like the ability to imagine an object in my mind and (now that I am older) awareness in a faint way that objects exist outside my immediate sight, but most are no more an instinctive element of what I am than flying would be even if I had wings. (I know they say that one area of growth is supposed to come before another, but evidently nobody told my brain that, so...) I feel like I even "emulate" human language ability, in that as good as I supposedly am at writing, it's not my natural "inner voice" -- though explaining that would take another ten blog posts. :-p
It tells me a lot that I'm looking forward to the days I'll be "recovering" from the wisdom tooth removal, to be honest, because it will mean not having to fake-normal for a while. I think that I need to start re-evaluating what I am doing with my life that makes surgical recovery look like a pleasing vacation, and get to work on changing it. There's no reason for me to live my life as unhappily as I have been.
Posted by moggy at September 02, 2003 03:08 PM | TrackBackSeeing ex-girlfriends does that to me too - instant midlife crisis :P
If you get any answers, blog them, because I'm 45 and still haven't been able to get a decent life going.
Maybe its the fall weather - I usually get feelings of dread left over from going back to school in September.
Posted by: Matt on September 2, 2003 03:38 PMSame here. Some of it was simply realizing that this is the *first* September that I wasn't in some kind of class in 23 years, and that is deeply disturbing for me.
Another aspect is that I had a long talk with Kyle recently about establishing one's independent adult self and what plans I need to work on for the future. I hadn't entirely figured out what that meant until today, because two things happened:
1. The surgeon, in discussing postop recovery, specifically emphasized that I would need to focus on fulfilling my own needs and let others take care of themselves.
2. I saw my ex and instantly not only remembered how miserable I'd made myself trying to fulfill his expectations, but realized that I'm still doing that to myself.
It finally dawned on me, then, that the Big Thing I need to do is focus on making my life something more than a machine to fulfill the wishes/expectations of those in my life. It's going to take a while, because I need to figure out (classic midlife crisis!) what *I* want to be doing with my time still, but I think it's really going to be worth it in the long run. I feel a lot better even just thinking about taking such steps, which is an encouraging sign.
Of course, I could be totally wrong...
Posted by: Moggy on September 2, 2003 04:58 PMI've the same experience with seeing an ex -- not fun. In fact, as I was going through LB today, I worried somehow he'd see me in the car or around campus (this is not a reality of course, but I was shaking for most of the day anyway). I think writing everything you're feeling about it will help more and more. You have a lot of people that care about you and support you (both human and feline). If you need help, we're here for you...
Posted by: Kyle on September 2, 2003 11:34 PM
