Midlife Crisis

Recently I started using my Facebook feed for a therapy session. Because of the vague nature of the posts and the potential for misunderstanding (given the target audience), I decided to just disable Facebook for awhile instead. 

I have been having a lot of trouble at home. It has affected my work and continues to affect all of my relationships. Since getting married I have lost a lot of close friends. And while it may be true, as my spouse likes to say, that some of those people didn't have my best interests in mind anyway, I really would have preferred to figure that out on my own, or talk about it, rather than fighting. 

I don't want to go into the nature of the fights too much, nor the specifics. I have shared them with some people. Suffice it to say that they haven't been fair fights. This happens a lot when one person feels like they have nothing else to lose. I used to be that person. In fact the entire marriage has felt like karma at times. Maybe it is. 

I have learned a lot about taking care of someone, about boundaries, about the limits of love. I haven't reactivated Facebook just yet, but when I do, I'll move those thoughts here as well. (In fact, I'd like to move a lot off of Facebook, haha.) In any case I am at a place in my life where I am redrawing boundaries, and sometimes that is going well and sometimes it isn't. My spouse and I now live in separate rooms in the same house. It's more peaceful now. I don't know if this can be a long term arrangement or not.

Mostly I am heartbroken. It is still hard to focus on work, it's hard to interact with people. I have returned to the unshakeable feeling that if things go wrong with people, I will go nuclear, and things will go downhill from there. This stems from a lack of confidence in my self control. It shows how many times I have been pushed over the edge. 

In addition I now have several budding health problems to keep an eye on. Face spasms, losing strength in my legs, chest pain. High blood pressure. I'm worried about strokes and heart attacks, which run rampant in my family. I have to learn to keep my stress low. That's hard for me to begin with; impossible, when I feel like I have to defend myself. 

Add to this my persistent foot problems, and it's a tough recipe. As I write this, my right foot is screaming at me. It's the one that's had surgery most recently (2023). I sprained it again two days ago on a curb. It's very prone to injury. Nevertheless, I do try to get those steps in, and I'm still riding my bike; just not as much as I did when I lived in Portland and Seattle. It's just one more thing that makes everything else harder to deal with. 

So, I now return to the blogging world. Perhaps to complain about my childhood, perhaps just to talk about my pain; or, perhaps for a higher purpose. I'd like to get motivated again and get to the top of my game. I expect this to be a representation of that process, with jagged ups and downs, cans and can'ts, dos and oh-goodness-I'll-never-do-that-agains. 

Today I am on my way to pick up my uncle's Sonic, which I had service and emissions done on in anticipation of my spouse driving more. It's the last dime I will spend on that problem. Between insurance, tires, wipers, oil changes, and this service, I've spent nearly $4,000 on this car, and it hasn't really been driven at all. I would like to see that change. 

For me, that's the bottom line for a lot of things. I don't want my investments to go to waste. If my life were a stock, I'd be in recession. I need to learn how to make my.efforts more fruitful.