Notes from a Midlife Chronic??
When Is the Crisis Over?
A year ago, I started Notes from a Midlife Crisis, a project born of my very real, very raw sense that life as I knew it was unraveling. I didn’t have any particular goal or objective in mind other than to show up once a week and authentically share my experience in the hopes that others might relate or feel less alone in their own journeys.
A year later, I find myself asking: at what point does a crisis stop being a crisis and start becoming a chronic condition? If this were a medical chart, my midlife crisis would be on its third refill of antibiotics with no improvement in sight. Surely, at some point, I’m supposed to snap out of it, or get “better”, right?
The word crisis comes from the Greek krisis, which originally referred to the turning point in a disease—when the patient either recovers or succumbs. It wasn’t a lingering state; it was a decision point, a fork in the road. In that sense, a midlife crisis isn’t about wallowing (though I do that exceptionally well); it’s a reckoning: will I keep living the way I have been, or will I let certain parts of me—my habits, my comforts, even my illusions—die? The unspoken promise is that on the other side of this metaphorical death lies a more authentic, deliberate way of being.
The Fork in the Road
Here’s the thing they don’t tell you about midlife: the fork in the road doesn’t come with road signs. There’s no flashing arrow saying, This Way to Your Best Life! Instead, you get whispers—quiet, nagging thoughts like, Is this all there is? and Time is running out. These whispers, as much as I’d like to drown them out with a good Netflix binge, demand attention. They ask: Are you going to keep doing what you’ve always done because it’s comfortable? Or are you willing to risk the discomfort of change?
At 54, I’m acutely aware of how much of my life has been shaped by responding to circumstances and obstacles as best I could but often without a clear embodiment of what the consequences of those choices would entail. Now, I’m faced with the unsettling realization that those small, daily choices have compounded into a life I’m not entirely sure I chose.
As Alfred D’Souza said, “For a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. At last, it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.”
How often have I told myself: “just wait until the business is more profitable. Wait until the divorce is settled. Wait until the kids are launched. Then, I’ll get to that place where my life finally works for me.” But that’s the problem - if I wait for life to be neat and tidy before I live authentically, I’ll be doing it from six feet under.
But here’s the hope: this reckoning, painful as it is, isn’t an ending—it’s a beginning. A messy, complicated, deeply human chance to finally live the life I was meant to, not the one I stumbled into.
Why I Hate the Term "Midlife Awakening"
Lately, I’ve noticed a trend toward rebranding the midlife crisis as a "midlife awakening." Apparently, if you drink enough green juice and do enough yoga, you’ll emerge from this period like a butterfly—lighter, freer, glowing with purpose. (And hopefully with better abs.) But for most of us, if we’re doing midlife right, it’s not an awakening; it’s more like a shedding. And shedding is painful.
It’s not just about letting go of youthful dreams or forgiving ourselves for mistakes; it’s about confronting the stark truth that time is finite. There’s no "someday" anymore. The poignancy of this moment isn’t in some triumphant emergence but in its quiet heartbreak—the recognition of what’s gone, what’s slipping away, and what still might be possible if we’re brave enough to try.
The Art Class I Didn’t Know I Signed Up For
The challenge of creating the life we want at 54 is that we’re not working with a blank canvas. By this stage, our lives are already crowded with the choices we’ve made, the paths we’ve taken—or avoided—and the inevitable detritus of living. There are exes and children, careers and gaps in careers, regrets we can’t undo, and joys we might not have fully appreciated. These pieces take up space on the canvas of the next twenty years. But maybe that’s not a limitation. Maybe it’s a mosaic, where the task isn’t to erase what’s already there but to arrange the broken, beautiful fragments of the life we’ve lived into something meaningful. Something we can look at with pride and say, Yes, this is my life. And it’s a work of art.
The Shadow of Mortality
If the whisper of time is running out weren’t enough, there’s also the looming presence of my aging parents. Watching their decline has been like a sneak preview of my own future, except it’s the kind of movie you wish you could walk out of. And when they’re gone, I’ll be next in line. There’s no way to sugarcoat that reality, and honestly, I’m not sure I want to. It’s a stark reminder that whatever compromises I make now, whatever courage I lack, the bill will come due—and sooner than I’d like.
But there’s also an unexpected gift in this awareness: the clarity that comes from knowing time is precious. It sharpens the choices I make and forces me to ask hard questions. Am I living deliberately, or am I just coasting? Am I making decisions that align with who I want to be, or am I simply avoiding discomfort?
Choosing Life
So, when is the crisis over? Maybe it’s not. Maybe the point isn’t to "get over it" but to let it reshape us. To sit with the discomfort, let certain things die, and in doing so, choose life—not the life we’ve stumbled into but the life we consciously create. To treat every day as a crisis of choice between autopilot and authentically living.
I don’t have all the answers, but I do know this: transformation isn’t about fixing what’s broken; it’s about becoming more of who we were always meant to be. And if that means spending another year grappling with the whispers of time and mortality, so be it. After all, I’d rather wrestle with those whispers than silence them entirely. Because when time is running out, the only real mistake is to stop listening
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Thanks to all of you who have joined me this past year on this journey of discovery. A writer needs an audience and I’m grateful to you for your readership!
Something about the mosaic metaphor has me thinking about the fallibility of human memory. Researchers tell us we corrupt our memories every time we access those files. Over time, we rewrite so much of them that they are eventually no longer the true account. And those are the ones we can hold onto. Most moments are lost forever.
I promise I'll bring this around...
This reality leaves some imaginative people wondering if technology will "solve" this memory problem for us. It's as if we'll one day remember every moment perfectly if we so desire. But oh what a crowded mosaic we'd be working with in that case. (That's nothing to say of the memories we're glad to lose.)
It's unrealistic to imagine trying to reconcile every version of this life that's ever breathed with the current one. Thankfully we lose so many of our tiles as we go so we can even stand the chance to move what remains.
Am I making any sense?
So beautiful and articulate! Thank you for this well considered exploration. ✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨