Lost in the Supermarket

I find myself wishing I was 18 again. Not really 18, but have the body I had at 18, the prospects I had at 18, and none of the responsibilities that I now own. I wish I did not work for a massive corporation at a menial job that both bores me and is distasteful to me. I wish I did not live in a house in the suburbs, with a husband and 3 kids and 2 dogs, etc., etc. I wish I did not spend the bulk of my time performing housework--at which I fail to excel--and watching ridiculous nonsense on television in my rare moments of rest.

I am experiencing a typical mid-life crisis. Which, I suppose, is what bothers me the most.

You see, there is nothing remotely interesting in this. I am not even interested in this. It tugs at some invisible, deep pit in my bowels that this is the sum of my life. I am entirely ordinary. Even my despondancy is uninteresting in its utter lack of rarity.

As a child, you expect more, especially if you are precocious. People spend much time exalting your potential, encouraging you to reach it--for what? As our society tends to measure things, I am on top of the world. I have exceeded the 2.5 kids. I own my own home. I have a good job with great benefits. I have a brand new HDTV, a huge truck, a minivan. My children go to private schools. We live comfortably enough to travel, eat out, and keep the house a comfortable 74 degrees year-round.

Yet I'm bored. Bored and disappointed. I feel worthless, because I contribute nothing. I write manuals that aren't read for a company that is solely devoted to making money. I spend no time creating, contribute to few charities, and then only a pittance, and have no friends. I haven't time for friends. In 30 years, I shall perhaps die unnoticed except for my immediate family. They, too, will soon forget. They will only remember me out of long association and social expectations.

I am only one in a long line of people history will forget--history has forgotten. I am lost in the mundaneity of everyday life.

I want my verve back. I want the feeling of possibility that was mine as a teenager--the feeling that life was not a cage in which the bars loomed ever closer, but an open road. I want all the damn, stupid metaphors they promised me in song to be true.

Most of all, though, I want to be interested in something again.

So perhaps that's what this is. Perhaps this is a cry for help. Or, more likely, it will be a short-lived attempt at making myself feel better that I will abandon in a few days. We'll see.