What happened to the dreams that we all hold so dear at age 17 or 18, coming out of high school, believing life is fresh and exciting? What happened to mine? Not that I was ever the most focused and driven person. Its true, I waffled between being a cop or becoming a marketing executive. I dabbled with the idea of entering the medical field until that eyeball dissection in Anatomy and Physiology class during my junior year of high school. And while I trifled with these possibilities, somewhere in my head I could imagine myself taking over the show business industry in a streak of hot lights and red carpets while creating timeless literary works in my free time.

But that is not the point.

The point is that somewhere along the way, my life took a deviant turn to a path that was in no way connected to any of those slim wispy dreams that were always just out of reach. Somewhere, along the way, my life became completely ordinary, mundane, and god forbid, predictable.

As I look through the daily classified ads trying to find that always-elusive something that will be my ideal position, the job that I live to get up and go to every day, I often review where I am compared to where I should have been at the age of 37. It seems that my lack of direction took me into the one career that I constantly and consistently avoided. I find myself, no matter how many directions I’ve tried to take, in that one role that my mother always said I would be fabulous as. I am, in short, a glorified secretary.

Oh god, its hard to admit that this is what my life has become. Five years ago, walking on a dusty gravel road, I had a vision. It was terrifying. Here was my life thirty years from now, exactly as it was now, only aged a bit. I couldn’t take it anymore. I took my 2 children and divorced my husband of 10 years, hell-bent on affecting a different life, not the same old thing that I’d been living day after endless day. Did it work? For a short while, in a sense, but not exactly. For several years I found myself at the mercy of myself again and with the lack of finances to make many monumental changes. After five years of trying to recreate myself, I find that I have recreated the same self that I was - only in a different town, with a different husband and a new last name.

Now I can add to that the endless bills from which I can no longer see my way out of and that claustrophobic feeling of being trapped in a debt-ridden reality; of being forced to stay in the despicable position I am in because I can’t afford to try to recreate me anymore. My frustration mounts on a daily – perhaps even hourly - basis. Here is what I’ve become. Here is my next 30-40 years…if I’m lucky….or it could be more.

Call it a mid-life crisis that has existed for the extent of my thirties.

Call it what you will, but I call it misery.

I hate life.

Credits: Littlebirdie