Let's talk about feeling stuck in midlife

While you gaze longingly at your past self, your future self still feels elusive.

Photo by Nguyen Khiem on Unsplash

I’ve never really thought of aging as a transition, a very gradual, hopefully long transition maybe, but not something that causes a physical shift like the discombobulation you feel when a big life change happens; you leave a relationship, switch careers, someone close to you dies, you move house/country.

Forty feels different to me. I feel like a caterpillar who’s got stuck halfway through the transition into a butterfly. I’m a new hybrid insect that a four year old would marvel over, catch and put in an old glass jar, all legs and wings wriggling around trying so hard to become what I was supposed to become but not really knowing how.

The average life expectancy for a female in the UK is 82. At forty we are pretty much slap bang in the middle of our lives, our past selves a distant memory but our future selves still feeling out of reach. And obviously that’s a best case scenario.

Recently there has been an explosion of books published about women ‘blowing up’ their lives in midlife. Personally I hate that term. I’m sure most of these real and fictional women have justifiable reasons for making a change. I’m always going to support women finding the courage to leave failing relationships, toxic jobs or anything else that’s crushing them. But I also wonder how many of these women are just stuck in the transition and have no idea how to keep carefully wiggling themselves free, the pressure gets too much and they crack.

Being stuck is one of the hardest feelings. I went to a talk a while ago between a famous writer and physiotherapist best friend duo. They were talking about how being stuck in indecision feels like having one foot on the train and one foot on the platform, being pulled in opposing directions until something breaks.

This doesn’t feel quite as intense as that. I’ve been there, I got on the train. But it’s almost like a more stretched out version where the train is driving off really, really slowly while you keep getting on and off, checking your route, reading book after book and moving seats until something in you settles and you stop.

I think it’s hard to argue with the assertion that we get more self aware, and ultimately more authentically ourselves, the older we get, the more life we live, the more therapy we do. We’re told that, for women especially, the fourth and fifth decades are when we finally peel away the layers and uncover our true selves. What I’ve been wondering recently is, were we actually more wholly ourselves when we were young and uninhibited? Were the clues to ‘finding ourselves’ actually there all along hidden amongst the endless people pleasing and milestone collecting?

The versions of myself I most long for, at 40, are the brave, ambitious, focused versions of my past self.

The 10 year old who attended the wedding of a Cypriot couple when her family got invited while on holiday, and insisted on going up on stage to shake hands with the bride and groom to get some cake.

The 13 year old that stole a sheet of her Mum’s best writing paper to write a love letter to the boy in her class she fancied and put it in his desk, only to get mercilessly teased.

The 20 year old who spent every spare moment on the fourth floor of the university library trawling the back catalogues of Creative Review and Design Week to find the names of design agencies in London she wanted to apply to. She knew what she wanted that girl did - to not go home. She was going straight from university in Newcastle to work in London and was not stopping at Sheffield on the way. She was focused and determined and did whatever she could to make that happen - ambition surging through her veins.

The 26 year old who got on a plane to New Zealand with no return ticket. Landing on that runway was the most exhilarating moment of her life to date, knowing she’d moved to the other side of the world by herself. The ultimate adventure. Waking up jet lagged and alone in a hotel room at 5am was the loneliest she’d ever felt.

The 28 year old who told her alcoholic boyfriend she was leaving him.

The 29 year old who went travelling round South America for 3 months by herself, riding down the worlds most dangerous road on a bike, walking the Inca Trail and hiking through the Columbian mountains.

At 39 a lot of these versions of myself feel like a distant memory. Leafing through photo albums the other day I removed a photo of that 29 year old, short awkward bob blowing in the breeze as I stood, arms wide, on a wooden post with a columbian beach in the background. I’m wearing a playsuit, my legs out, sporting a healthy tan after two months in the sun. I pinned it to my notice board next to the photo of me when I was three with my Nan, who is wearing a red velvet jumpsuit. Hero.

At 40, I feel out of touch with who I used to be and not yet who I’m meant to be. Are we really more authentically ourselves the younger we are, then society and life gradually drains it out of us? As our self awareness increases, does our bravery decrease? As we age, does fear stand stronger because we have more to lose? I’m left wondering if reconnecting with the former is the key to unlocking the later. Maybe there is peace to be found in that retrieval.

So as I begin the first week of my forties I’m thinking about how I can be braver and what that means for me in my life now. I’m in week one so I certainly don’t have it all figured out but this is what I know so far:

• My partner is the safety and security I need to allow me to take risks and be braver in other areas of my life.

• I want to see more of the world with a backpack on my back.

• I need to do design work where I feel valued and useful.

• I need to push myself with writing. Do it. Publish it. Take courses. If at 50 I’m reading this back and I haven’t published a book I’ll be pissed off at my past self.

• I need to find community with other writers and women in midlife without children.

• Being an Auntie is one of the most important jobs of my forties.

So, I wont be blowing up my life. Although I’d be lying if I said I haven’t felt drawn towards doing that at times. I think true bravery when you’re older is more about taking informed risks. When you’re young you can decide to change your whole life with little to no consequences. You don’t really know what you’re doing or why, you’re following your instincts and recognising that you don’t have much to lose. There is much less collateral damage.

When you’re older the scaffolding of life has built up. You’ve built it up, carefully and lovingly over time and while the temptation might be there to take a sledge hammer to it at times - there is a reason you built in the way you did.

Maybe it’s a bit like a game of Jenga. The deeper into the foundations you reach, the more you risk toppling it over. But you need to move some bricks around, remove some, keep building, keep moving forwards. It’s just about which bricks you choose, when and how you move them. I guess that’s where the wisdom of age comes in. We’re no longer stabbing randomly in the dark, we can take our time and carefully pick our next move based on what we now know about ourselves. And while there may still be plenty to discover, there is certainly more to go on than two decades ago.