My Midlife Crisis Lasted 30 Years, Until I Finally Figured Out What Was Missing The Whole Time
Fylkesarkivet I vestland | UnsplashYeah, that’s my mind, all twisted and wondering which end is up. It has been like that for over 30 years. I didn’t like who I was, what I was, or where I was going. It’s hard searching for yourself for so many years.
But there’s something about turning 65, going to Europe for the first time, publishing a book, losing everything on the computer, and getting COVID to bring a perspective to life.
My midlife crisis lasted thirty years
Tasha Marie / Unsplash+
I was the first person in my college graduating class to have a job before graduating. The previous February, I signed a contract to teach in Hawaii.
Dream job, right? I just didn't want to teach — at all, anywhere. I was resisting the ever-present visual disability that governed what I could and couldn’t do. But that disability put me through college with no debt. The state program was designed to help students who had limited career opportunities; for me, it was pretty much “just teaching.”
A bit of a problem, since I already had a guaranteed job, but as my political science professor said, “How bad can teaching in Hawaii be?”
He had a valid point. I loved Hawaii, I loved my students, and I learned a lot about myself. But I returned to the mainland after three years because there wasn’t a social life for me (like there was in Vermont... snort). I worked for a few weeks in a public defender’s office, interviewing pretty shady characters for a miserly salary. I applied for and got a teaching job in a middle school down the road.
It was a good three years. I started a drama program, and met my husband. We married on the last day of school, headed to Phoenix the next day, and I got a job selling insurance. After all, my dad had been the insurance commissioner for the state of Vermont.
On a good week, I made $60. I reverted to what would work and got a teaching job at a junior high school for the next seven years. I wasn’t happy: no respect, struggling financially, and wanted something — anything — else to do with my life. Also, my brother was making over $100,000 in 1980 dollars — broken marriage, but he was a success.
The junior high led me to start the third of my fourth Master's Degree attempts — this time in gifted studies. I continued expanding my work with student theater, which I loved — I’m still in contact with many of my theater kids over the years. After we did “Peter Pan,” I took my cast to see a professional show at Gammage Auditorium. I would have put my students up against that cast any day.
But I was still not happy. I decided to start a learning center to tutor and create programs for gifted students. An entrepreneur who made no money. I got a job running a professional learning center in Phoenix and then transferred to take over a new center in Maryland. I had respect, a cool job, and a lot of opportunities in the area.
Ethics got in the way — and not for the first time in my career. Suddenly, the learning center was owned by a “big educational encyclopedia company,” and their business decisions were not necessarily the best decisions for the students we worked with.
So I quit. Unemployed in Reagan’s America, with Ollie North in the news and trickle-down economics. Not a good time.
A friend from Vermont called to say my former school district was looking for a gifted education coordinator and that I should apply. I did, and I was there for six years — and still unhappy, even though I had free rein to develop whatever programs I wanted. I was still “just a teacher,” even though I was highly respected in the district.
I know I’m naïve and stubborn. I know how early childhood led to all my self-esteem issues. I know I was raised by an emotionally abusive, narcissistic mother. I know all that now. But deep down, I was searching for approval. Teaching wouldn’t bring it.
We moved back to Arizona after a particularly brutal Vermont winter. My in-laws were having health issues and didn’t have many years left. I wanted one more year in Vermont so I could have my theater students from middle school in my Advanced Placement U.S. History class — but it wasn’t to be. We moved, and I regret that I couldn’t see what that desire was trying to show me.
One day, doing laps in the pool in Arizona, during summer break, after 5 years of teaching in two different school districts, the epiphany finally hit.
Would returning to a teaching career I loved finally solve my midlife crisis? Yes and no.
tabitha turner / Unsplash
Retirement was on the horizon, and I jumped at it: Time to travel, sew, create art, read, write — three more unpublished works (fiction and non). I moved back to Vermont because Arizona politics and water/weather were just too unhinged.
Then my husband got sick, went into hospice for two years, and I became a widow. Nothing ahead of me but an abyss. I had no clue, as I spent two years in a solid fog of grief. Then, after a visit to friends in Arizona, I realized I had been off one of my depression meds for three weeks — I was crying and dreaming again.
The fog was lifting, and I had to figure out what I was going to do with myself yet again. Birthday 65 was looming. How would I make a meaningful life in the years ahead for me?
Fast forward to this past Friday, as I wrote for three solid hours.
It was then that I realized what was missing from my life this whole time: A purpose.
I realized that just because I was 65 didn’t mean I was done with my “work.” I had life experiences to share through writing and art. COVID brain was receding, I was recovering from my first trip to Europe, and I had stories to write.
I am Traveler 75: challenged, but determined, sharing my experiences as they crop up to collide with current times. This is the most excited I have been in years. I know where I’m going.
All those jobs and experiences haven’t been in vain. I know “stuff,” and I’m ready to share to activate many of us septuagenarians who have life experience to share in this crazy world of ours.
Linda A. Moran retired after three decades in the public school system. She's crafting a new life as an author, activist, and artist. She is the author of The Perks of Hospice: Stories of Love, Life, and Loss, and is a regular contributor to Medium and Substack.
