The First Quarter and Beyond

With love to Jen!  “It shocks me how I wish for…what is lost and cannot come back.”  ―Sue Monk Kidd

“They call it the “quarter-life crisis.” It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are many things about yourself that you didn’t know and may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now. You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren’t exactly the greatest people you have ever met, and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you don’t recognize is that they are realizing that too, and aren’t really cold, catty, mean, or insincere, but that they are just as confused as you.

You look at your job … and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing, or maybe you are looking for a job and realizing you are going to have to start at the bottom and that scares you. Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because you suddenly realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable and what isn’t. One minute, you are insecure and then the next, secure. You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past for dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.

You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you. Or you lie in bed and wonder why you can’t meet anyone decent enough that you want to get to know better. Getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic. You go through the same emotions and questions over and over because you cannot seem to make a decision. You worry about loans, money, the future, and making a life for yourself … and while winning the race would be great, right now you’d just like to be a contender. What you may not realize is that everyone reading this relates to it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out. And really, this is an acknowledgment that you are not alone in this.” It’s all part of the glorious rollercoaster of life Bill Hicks talks about.

There are just as many dark hours as there are sunny hours, and by the time you’ve reached fifty, I kind of like to think it’s the sunny hours that you think of the most.