I've been depressed a little bit lately.
When I think about who I was just 5 years ago, to who I am now, a lot has changed.
I feel like I'm so far behind the curve of how I'm supposed to feel or what I'm supposed to be doing, that to get where I need to be seems like a lifetime away. Its like I'm in the wilderness between the fertile ground where I used to live, and the unknown place where I'm going.
I don't feel ambitious anymore. I used to want to conquer the world, but now I'm okay with just going to school like a good little student. I used to want to find love, but I'm okay with just me. I've seen the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and lets just say I'm in no hurry to get there.
I think about people who have bought houses and have nice cars and wives and children. And for so long I used to despise the idea of seeing myself settling down into all of that. I wanted to fall in love and run away with someone, not become a traditional drone who who goes through the motions of celebrating birthdays and holidays as highlights of an otherwise uninspired and underwhelming life. For so long I surrounded myself with people who believed and lived the same way that I did. Now they are off, married galavanting, some even with children in tow. Some of my people are jealous of this, I used to be, but now, I feel like its a life that is impossible to imagine for me anymore.
But unfortunately I've learned that the Love I seek is only for the young. When I was younger, I was in love. It did all the things. It was freeing, it was belonging, it crossed all the lines and broke all the rules. But as I've gotten older it's all slipped away. The obligations of family, responsibility, adulthood, which I would have been more than happy to face with someone I loved, I do alone. The age of growing up with a love that lasts is over.
The stuff of what it would take to get there again, is so far from where I am now. The expectations have changed too. The women I've dated have gotten older and with that comes the biological clock stuff. More and more it becomes less about love and more about children and family and home. Try to fit the mold of a family man for me is like starting from scratch and letting go of everything that has defined me. Its abandoning my identity and my principles and my dreams to accommodate a lifestyle that I'm not used to, all for the sake of being able to be loved. I've begun a process to trade in chasing the love that I've known and expected, for the mantle of duty, with the hope that someday I can learn to enjoy life how other people do it.
I simply have to face the reality that the vast majority of women want children and all the bells and whistles that go along with that. I've always wanted to grow together with someone, to explore, to spend years discovering who we are together and build a foundation that could tackle anything, then deciding together what we were going to do. If we wanted we could start a business, have children, or find a nice beach in south America to grow old together. The world was in front of us.
I took for granted the relationships and the women who shared that dream with me. I thought women like that would always be around. It was all I knew. It was what I grew up with. Marriage meant being a missionary, sailor, journalist, world relief employee, peace corps volunteer, etc but just not having to do it alone. Don't get me wrong, I've done it alone so far but, it would have been much cooler if I didn't have to choose between doing me and being alone.
Now All I know is that I need to buy a house, get a good job that makes lots of money, buy a big fat car/minivan/suv that way I would make good "husband material" on the meat market of life. So I go to school, eventually I'll have a 9-5 job and a house and an SUV. And with that mortgage payment, the debt and the obligation, I will know that my spirit has been crushed but, at least I won't be alone. Until she divorces me and takes all of it away, along with the kids. But I hear its worth it, must be, because everyone else is doing it.
TL
R My greatest challenge is transitioning from Young Optimistic me to Crotchety Pragmatist me.
