For the last several years and specifically for the last three, the only things holding me together are a seriously dark and often inappropriate sense of humor, feral determination, a stubborn inability to quit, and an obscene amount of emotional duct tape. I’m fairly convinced my Guardian Angel has a permanent look of abject mortification, blames me entirely for their ulcer, and has most likely taken up day drinking.
I am not a “Hot Mess,” “Perfectly Imperfect,” or a “Beautiful Disaster.” I stopped fitting any of those by the time I was 25. The last decade in particular has watched me go from “Train Wreck” to “Four Alarm Dumpster Fire” at damn near the speed of light. In 2023 I realized I had evolved into whatever you call it when those two settings collide. By the beginning of 2025, I finally had a name for it. I’m calling it my “Nuclear Holocaust” era.
I have been stuck in survival mode for over a decade and operating on damn near full-time autopilot for the last six years. That kind of long-term crisis living does some serious damage to your executive functioning. I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t dealing with a crisis or a traumatic experience, or preparing/waiting for the next one to come at me full speed.
For context: the last 13 years of my life have been a rotating disaster exhibit. I got married, and divorced; had two kids; lost both my parents to cancer and a second mom to a heart attack/stroke; have been homeless/displaced 5 times between 2013 and 2025; was separated from my children for three years because of homelessness; have been in two severely mentally and emotionally abusive relationships; got diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder; became disabled; and ultimately lost custody of my children.
At this point I don’t recognize the woman staring back at me in the mirror. My life has been systematically dismantled and I have lost damn near everything I ever loved or cared about.
I’m standing waist-deep in a midlife crisis with a plot twist so cold it should have had its own trigger warning. I’m trying to wrap my brain around the fact that the life I wanted is gone, never to return, and that I’m supposed to start over with a new purpose and a new direction, and find my happiness, fulfillment, and purpose in something that can’t possibly measure up to the dream I fought to have for so long.
A midlife crisis is defined as:
It is an existential transition where people look back at their life choices, compare them to their original goals, and grapple with the realization of aging and mortality. The term was coined in the 1960s by psychoanalyst Elliott Jaques, who noticed middle-aged patients experiencing sudden depressive periods and lifestyle shifts. -Wikipedia
Technically speaking I am experiencing a total life upheaval, but midlife crisis has a better ring to it.
I am using my blog to process what I’ve been through and the losses I’ve taken, and to hopefully figure out who I am now and where I’m headed going forward.
The warning label was the first example of how this blog is a little different than most other blogs. This is essentially going to be an opportunity to view a midlife crisis and a total life upheaval in real time, from the inside out, as they happen and as I’m processing them.
If healing is a road trip, mine has barely started and I’ve already pulled over several times, locked the keys in the car once, had an anxiety attack, and ended up driving back home. Now I’m parked in the driveway, engine off, staring at the house and not ready to go in. Healing, particularly when it comes to past trauma, is not linear. For every step forward you wind up taking two steps back. It becomes unbearably painful before you feel that pain subside, and it may take literal years before you feel ok when certain things are brought up, let alone truly claim happiness for yourself.
I won’t lie. I am mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted, to a degree I literally cannot put into words. But my momma not only didn’t raise a quitter, she didn’t explain how to quit either. One day I hope to be thankful for that, but today was hard, this week has been overwhelming, and I just want to take a nap until shit is different if not better. I will undoubtedly wake up tomorrow, which means we do it all over again, and try to do better than we did today.
:heavy sigh, severe eye roll:
Welcome to my midlife crisis.
💋Queen B.