Somewhere In the Middle

 

Somewhere in the Middle

 

There is a point in life where your own reflection becomes haunting: withered, gaunt and unrecognizable. There are deep crevices imprinted as signatures, on the once fine elastic skin. You are too old to know better and too young to give up. It is the midlife crisis you heard your parents or friends refer to, but now you are in the vortex of instability, asking yourself, what’s the point?

With no one to blame but the neurotic ticking of time, you begin to question your past, present and the unstable future. It’s no one’s fault that suddenly you’ve come to a halt. It would be easier to blame the aqua skies above, or be able to point a rigid finger at someone and say, “It’s your fault”. But it isn’t anyone’s fault. The only sure thing during this phase of your life is that the children will still want their breakfast on time, your husband will expect you to roll over and caress his tense shoulders and you will dutifully fold the laundry.

Underneath the façade of happiness, there lays an unsettled soul yearning for something new, more meaningful. You are perplexed that mundane things make you flinch with agony. What you used to enjoy seems lackluster, inconsequential. A new beginning is too hard to conceive and yet the old existence is no longer satiable. Sometimes at night, you tuck into a fetal position on the corner of the king size bed, so as not to disturb your partner. Hot tears escape, rippling through the satin sheets. The only evidence of your unhappiness is the new lines around the corners of your eyes.

It is not easy to voice your emptiness. You fear that others will judge you, deeming you ungrateful and selfish. It’s not that you want more. You want something different. Unfortunately, different requires turning your back on the stable environment you have built for your family. Though you are intimidated by changing your routine, there is a guilty thrill of imagining actually doing it. Starting over.

 Instead, you opt to live with only a mirage of another life. That makes you happy enough to stay. That’s when your husband of twenty years- his eyes as dead as yours says to you, “I’m leaving.”