What Now?

You start off with the same milestones as everyone. People wait for you to roll over, sit up, walk and run. Then you go to school, get a job, get married, have kids, raise them, retire, be a grandparent and the cycle starts again.


What happens when you hit the one of these and stop?


I know that I am never going to retire, we are not having kids and I am increasingly unsure of what comes next.
My life has always had the next goal, the next achievement, the next chapter. Now I am a little lost because I sometimes wonder what I am working so hard for. Living to work is not what anyone wants to do, but when you have children, you do what is necessary to provide them with the best you can. When you are staring 30 more years in the eye and realising that at best you'll squeeze out 4 weeks vacation a year, you wonder why bother. What is the purpose of life if all it has become is the drudgery of day to day, month to month, year to year. Small things to look forward to are good, but when you are faced with decades more of 50 hour weeks and living on the fringes of what society has deemed normal, it weighs on you. Happiness is fleeting and we hold on dearly to anything that brings a moments respite from the exceedingly ordinary lives we lead.
I hear about folks without kids who go on grand adventures, leave it all behind and pursue a life that they choose. Sounds good, but it is not easy to leave behind the trappings of the regular life. What would I do for work? Where would we live? What about our extended, albeit slightly estranged. families? Will it actually be better? These things run through my mind as I think about just saying no to all I thought I wanted until very recently.
At 43, is it too late to start again?
I wish I had an answer. It has been haunting me for some time now as we move further away from having kids, I want to figure out who I am and where I want to be. I am certain that I was not meant to be 70 and struggling to live, working a full time job and just getting by every day. So many people live those desperate lives of work, eat, sleep, repeat and I don't want to become a drone who only stops working when I stop breathing. Following my passion is all well and good in theory, but a mortgage isn't paid in dreams and my partner in life cannot carry the load while I pursue something that may never become anything of value. Real life means the bills come in, you pay them and whatever is left over is what you can try to live on. We do better than most, we have more than enough food, clothes on our backs, a little fun now and then and a roof over our heads. This should be enough but I can't help but thinking there should be more. We shouldn't be locked down to some conformity that isn't real to us. We are not of the world that we expected and maybe it is time to explore the world we do not know.
Dreams stay just that unless you act on them, but what price is paid for pursuing them. I don't know that I will ever be brave enough to actually give voice to what I want. The internal struggle between what I thought was going to happen and what has happened is very real and I just want to find my place in the world. If I don't, will I lay there, 20 years from now, silently judging and hating myself because I was to cowardly to demand happiness. I know that I wish 20 year old me would have thought a little more about where we would end up because that guy was a seriously shortsighted individual. The pursuit of immediate gratification is my biggest regret and while I can do nothing about the past, I can do something about the future. I don't know where I will be a year from now, but as long as it is moving towards a goal I have set and made real, then I will at least have that.
 Life really is too short and when you start down the back forty of your existence, it is probably time to look at yourself and ask one thing:
"Are you happy?"
If the answer is no...well, maybe it's time you do something about it, because no one else is coming to bail you out or tell you what to do with your own life. This is when you make a choice and whatever that is, wherever that takes you, it is 100 % on you. No excuses, no regrets, no looking back. I know my time is coming and when I reach that fork in the road, I hope I choose wisely.

The Dark Veil

I don't know how it starts or even what causes it, but when that Dark Veil starts coming down, it is near impossible to stop it. Depression is different for everyone and for me it begins with an actual physical feeling of that heavy veil weighing down my eyes. It is a physical manifestation of the darkness that is coming. Unable to force it to stop, I can only try to anticipate it's duration and the consequences everyday activities will impose on my mind. Everything becomes open to the black hole that is the depression and I don't know how to lift it.

The light seem dim, eating loses its appeal and every conversation is littered with triggers that set me off. I almost feel like I step outside myself at this time and watch my downward spiral through a tinted lens. I know what is happening but am powerless to halt its progress. Leaden steps, heavy limbs and a feeling of dread fill every morning, afternoon and night. I have developed a very good act to use during these times and the smile on my face disappears as soon as you turn away. My laughter echoes in the emptiness of what used to bring me joy and even trying to carry a conversation takes more than I can bear. I can understand those people for whom their depression leaves them unable to even leave the house, I have to convince myself every day to get out of bed when I am covered by the Veil. Fear is a powerful motivator and when you have come close to losing everything, you can make yourself go to work, even when you can barely stand to brush your teeth in the morning. I am always worried there will come a day when I can't even talk myself into going in and that is not a day I am sure I can handle.

The only truth I know is that it will come back, again and again. My only weapon is my mind and when that is compromised by the Veil, I feel lost. A natural joy and its corresponding dread is the routine of life and when you feel alone, unwanted and unworthy, it is hard to see the light of a better tomorrow.
But still I prevail.
I remind myself that waking up each day is a victory. Each step on the walk to work, a triumph and the completion of a shift, success.
I have learned that the smallest of joys can begin to push the dark cloud away, but I am also aware that the tiniest miscue can clamp it down again. The balance is delicate and despite my thinking I know exactly what is happening, it still persists. Lasting sometimes only days but most often weeks at a time, I have little control over its duration.
Men are supposed to be tough, strong and silent. I have become so good at masking the desperate nature of my emotions and it is rare that anyone knows of the dark presence in my days. I either don't know or can't bring myself to ask for help and it is frustrating. I am constantly advocating for my friends and family who suffer from mental health issues to get help, but when it comes to my own problems, I am like a wounded animal. I do what I must to survive and retreat to the relative safety of my home as soon as I can.
And that is how I survive. One day at a time until I start to feel the Veil lift. Slowly and in stops and starts until one day I wake up and my smile is real, my step light and the day holding only promise. I try to keep that feeling as long as I can and try to remember it for the next time it begins to weigh down on my life.